Everyone is overworked. It’s normal for TDC’s / DCs to go home and work for hours on their cases to simply keep on top of workload. On your rest days you’re encouraged to ‘work for a day back’ when you’re at home, so you sacrifice even more of your rest days to simply keep afloat. You have so much autonomy and ultimately there are too little numbers that most the time you are making all of the decisions, big decisions. You’ll be going to your first crown court hearing as OIC of the case, not knowing what to expect but after hearing horror stories about previous detectives being torn to shreds on the stand. You’re advised from day dot to ‘not let that person be you’ but how does one know about all of these things? A few pathetic training days months and months before you put any of this to the test and you’re expected to just get on and get through it. The job doesn’t feel like a job, it feels like a vocation. You’re made to feel like overtime isn’t an option (which realistically it isn’t, if there is a live job in, you’re staying) it doesn’t matter whether you had plans, your partners birthday or daughters graduation, you’re staying because the job ultimately comes first. The amount of officers who are on stress leave, return and things are just the same. Exactly the same and the cycle just continues. SLT don’t understand the impact their choices and decisions have on people and often are never seen or in a a position to be approached. I wouldn’t recommend joining the Met right now, as a TDC or even as a team officer. Everyone is so so stretched, being made to carry so much risk and there is absolutely no reward, no thanks or positive reinforcement when you do a good job and I don’t see the point in ruining your own personal life, crippling your mental health all for the sake of a job that operates before me and will continue to do so long after I’ve gone. Oh and lastly the DHEP, uni route is absolutely atrocious. The training is death by PowerPoint, hours and hours of words on a slide and nothing physical and the expectation of balancing uni work with live cases as well as ticking off competencies to show you’ve got the skills to be a detective, it’s EXHAUSTING!
