Response Policing: "It's challenging, demanding...but rewarding"

Managing a team and delivering that first response to your calls is undoubtedly a challenge, but for a Response Sergeant it’s all in a day’s work.

Sergeant Marc Atwal looks after a team responding to incidents across Derby city, and is sharing his experiences as part of the national Response Policing Week.

Marc said: “It’s challenging, it’s demanding, it’s intense - but one thing response policing is, it’s rewarding.

“Each day is different. We respond to a multitude of jobs, there’s a variety of incidents we attend on a day-to-day basis."

Like all officers, he started his career on response before spending some time developing his knowledge on several specialist units, including tackling organised crime. However, the love for frontline policing meant he wasn’t away for long, returning as a Response Sergeant and now having spent a total of five years working as a first responder.

In that time, Marc has seen and attended a multitude of incidents – from collisions to disputes – but says the most memorable are the successes, particularly being able to safeguard vulnerable people.

He added: “There’s numerous jobs I could speak about. There was an incident not so long ago,  where we were called about a concern for safety of an individual who’d had his address taken over by those involved in organised crime.

“Myself and a couple of others on my team attended that incident and we were not only able to safeguard this individual, but were also able to make an arrest and recover a large quantity of Class A drugs and cash.

“That investigation remains ongoing, but it was one that was certainly very rewarding. It’s those incidents that are the rewarding jobs.”

Working all hours of the day brings its own challenges, too, but this is something that Marc has found is helped by a good team.

“One of the main challenges I particularly find are certainly the shifts. It’s a quick change of the body clock.” Marc said.

“Having that good team ethos and that camaraderie between the team and, if everyone’s singing off the same hymn sheet – which we are – that’s what makes it go easier and smoother.

“I would never, ever deter anyone from joining the job.

“You’ve got to want to be a police officer, that’s one thing I will say. There’s times where you’re tested and pushed to your limits, and there’s times where you get unbelievable opportunities that you wouldn’t get elsewhere.

“One thing this job does give you is the chance to develop as an individual and be somebody.”

If you want to find out more about a career at Derbyshire Constabulary, visit our dedicated webpage.