Anonymous Bobby and Domestic Incidents

Ask any police officer and they will tell you, we deal with a LOT of domestic incidents.

Sometimes things get out of hand, and we are called. We all argue with our loved ones and sometimes things can get a bit ridiculous. However, there does appear to be a lot of people incapable of holding a relationship without constant police assistance.

The nature of domestics means that any domestic related incident leads to a report taking up valuable police time. I've personally been to a domestic whereby the husband has called us because his wife has hidden his Xbox and he wanted to play with it. The compulsory paperwork that follows takes around 30 minutes. The majority of the time, it is people as pathetic as the example I have just outlined calling us.

I always tell people, if police are frequently being called to you and your partner, perhaps it isn't working. This seems like ridiculous and alien advice to some people.

One incident I'll always remember was a French couple. The wife had called us as her husband was angry and throwing things around their home. Unfortunately neither spoke a word of English so we were trying to communicate through an interpreter over the phone. Suddenly the husband attacks. With vengeance in his eyes he lunges at myself and my colleague. We roll around on the floor with him to get him restrained. Meanwhile his wife has armed herself with a handbag and is swinging it viciously at my colleague and I. In the background a rather bewildered interpreter could be heard on the phone asking if we needed his assistance any further. All good fun and a comical scene to reflect on, except that the couple had children and they were distraught.

If I had a pound for every person who had called police to get their partner removed from their home, only to let them back in the next day and call us again, I would be rich enough to never don that foresaken uniform ever again.

Reflecting on the man and his Xbox, another call I once went to comes to mind. A neighbour had called us to a loud disturbance in the flat opposite her own. Upon our arrival, sure enough, hysterical shouting and crashing could be heard inside. A loud bang on the door from us and the flat fell silent. Footsteps gingerly approached the front door from inside and it opened. A young chap wearing a headset poked his head around the door, looking bemused. As it turned out he had been rigorously defending a fortification on Call of Duty on his Xbox and had probably got a little carried away with his role.

It's not really a laughing matter, though. I've also seen domestics that have led to murder, rape, serious assaults and abuse. Understandable then that a bloke taking Call of Duty so seriously is actually appreciated as a little light relief.

Anonymous Bobby