The Police

We needed the police the other night. My son had gone missing. At midnight. He was distressed. I was scared for him. I called the police.

They arrived.

They asked for some back ground. I explained best I could about how he is affected by early life trauma. How he can be irrational and impulsive if something happens. He maybe a teenager, but his behaviours can be very childlike. He can appear cocky, or even confrontational, when he is scared and frightened. Like post traumatic stress syndrome. I described the support we have, and how we are struggling to get more help. I told them we had years of therapy, which did help, but that the transition to college has really unsettled him.

I was stopped.

They were not saying it to me, but. People needed to stop using the police as social workers. Families should be sorting their own problems out. The police are also affected by cuts,and can not be sorting out family problems. If, when they find him, he was to be aggressive, they would chuck him in the back of the van, and he would be treated the same as everyone else. 

They left.

Five thousand, four hundred seconds later my son returned home. It was about 1.30 in the morning. He had seen the police, they drove passed him. He had been talking to a group of drunk men in the street.

The police came back.

They had seen him, but didn’t want to stop and then start chasing after him. They were cross at him. They thought he was taking the “micky” out them. Why didn’t he wave them down? Doesn’t he think they have better things to do, than driving round looking for kids who’ve run off? They asked him what he wants to do when he leaves college. He said join the army – he’s never said that before, obviously thinking of the first thing that came in to his head. They told him he wouldn’t last five minutes in the army with that attitude. He’d better sort himself out or he’d end up with nothing.

They left.

My son simply said, “I didn’t wave them down because I was scared.”

The story continues here with The Police Return