How to survive your police career
A practical guide for the 24/7 Bobby
Welcome to HTSYPC
Books, Blogs, Videos And Humour About Police Health & Welfare
How To Survive Your Police Career is a website dedicated to looking after your health, welfare and relationships. How can you get the sleep you need when working 24/7 and what to do when that sleep won’t come? What should you be eating on shifts to stay focused? Which medical conditions do Bobbies need to worry about and why? What exercise can stop you from getting injured and how to recover anyway if it all goes wrong? How can you stay sane in a role almost designed to ruin your mental health? And how can you protect your relationships when one of you is doing this most bizarre of jobs? The site is also home to our three advice books – one teaching old tricks for newer officers, another explaining health for the more experienced and a third written just for the partners of officers – what have they let themselves in for and how can they make it work! Read the blogs … watch the videos … and laugh at the funny stuff because if anyone needs cheering up then it’s today’s Bobby and Bobbie.
About the author - Darren Moor
Darren joined Kent Police in 1990. He was on section for six years before transferring to a ‘tac team’ where he spent a further four doing public order duties, EGT, Forward Intelligence Officer, search warrants, anti-drug and street robbery operations, POLSA, surveillance work and eating an awful lot of breakfasts. He then spent ten years as an AFO responding to spontaneous firearms incidents and carrying out protection duties for high-profile politicians and … continued eating an awful lot of breakfasts. He also qualified as a Ballistic Teams Medic, realising how useful this knowledge might prove seeing as he was the father of two small, and rather adventurous, boys.
No Moor Tomfoolery
In 2010 he decided that he was getting a little old for all that firearms tomfoolery and that he needed, instead, a role that didn’t involve climbing over eight-foot walls in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night and carrying more luggage than he generally took on holiday with the added pleasure then of hiding in a bush for hours whilst staring at a house and waiting for someone to come out who may or may not have a gun. He, therefore, returned to section and was promoted Sergeant where he remained until retirement in late 2020 doing a mixture of patrol skipper, admin and custody roles depending on what the Queen required of him that month.
Margate!
His last four years were spent at glorious Margate as permanent patrol skipper, thereby keeping the team safe from his often eccentric attitude to casefile and crime report admin. Enjoying himself and having a great team, he continued working 24/7 shifts right up to retirement, even staying on for an extra couple of months because, being in the middle of the covid crisis, it was the easiest way to get out of the house. Ask him nicely and he might bore you with the tale of the arrest he made during the last hour of his last shift, having once again run out of patrols – “Hi Darling, I’m going to be late …”
Tauma
Darren was a Trauma Management (TRiM) practitioner for fourteen years, aiding colleagues after incidents as well as assisting in the selection and training of new practitioners. He was also a Post Incident Manager (PIM) supporting colleagues after death or serious injury following police contact and was on the county board of the Kent Police Welfare and Ethics Committee.
The end of the beginning?
Now retired, he is married with two grown-up children – they somehow managed to survive childhood – and enjoys sailing (badly, sometimes suicidally), cycling, endless walking, trying to be middle-class by belonging to a cold-water swimming group, and then recovering from these energetic activities by reading historical biographies the size of building blocks – which encourages him to doze-off and catch-up on all that sleep he’s missed out on during the last thirty years of earlies, late shifts and nights. He lives on the Kentish Riviera in Herne Bay.
