EP 105 The Multiple Award Winning: Eren Bessim on "Building Safer Communities" (Insights on Crime, Resilience, and Business Safety and Being Ex-Police)

BIO

Eren is the Head of Safer Business Network Training and has successfully led initiatives in equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), fostering positive and inclusive work environments. His focus on employees and effective strategies has created award-winning, diverse workplaces and enhanced organisational cultures. Eren is renowned for building partnerships and improving safety across the UK and internationally. His involvement in key projects with stakeholders, including 'WAVE', 'Ask for Angela', Safe Havens, and initiatives to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls, reflects his strong commitment to create safer communities.

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/eren-bessim-9b8442110/

Awards:

David Clark Award 2023 – 1st November 2023

LGBT Defence Award – Outstanding Achiever – October 24

Security and Fire Excellence Award 2024 – December 24

ehbessim@hotmail.com

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo: 0:01

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0:43

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. The award winning Security Circle podcast. I should really re say that, shouldn't I? IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members mental health and well being. Now, I'm making a very special and different introduction today, because, I owe this man an apology, really. We recorded his podcast around about a year ago, and it's taken this long. To get it out there, and I can only say that, um, I, I, I have no justification for this whatsoever. He won the David Clark Award in 2023, the 1st of November, 2023. That's how long it's been. But since then, he's gone on to win two other awards. One is LGBT Defence Award for Outstanding Achiever in October 24. That did come to my attention, but more recently, he was a winner alongside myself and lots of other amazing winners at the Security and Fire Excellence Awards 2024. Yes, that was just a couple of weeks ago. It goes without saying, really, that this is an outstanding individual. His name is Erin Bessim. He is the head of Safer Business Network Training and has successfully led initiatives in equality, diversity, and inclusion, fostering positive and inclusive work environments. His focus on employees and effective strategies have created, literally, award winning. diverse workplaces and enhanced organizational cultures. Erin is renowned for building partnerships and improving safety across the UK and internationally. His involvement in key projects with stakeholders include WAVE, Ask for Angela, Safe Havens, and to tackle violence against women and girls, reflecting his strong Awesome commitment to create safer communities, Erin Bessim with the Safer Business Network won the David Award when I met him, but also I had the immense pleasure of a huge guilt complex when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, and I realized, oh, my gosh, yes, his podcast was still in the library of those to be published. I can only say it's a testimony to the amazing guests we have on the podcast and the amazing interest we have. So Erin, I apologize sincerely for leaving it this long, but you are the last podcast of the year, and it's a pleasure to publish a podcast today. Erin Bessin, welcome to the Security Circle podcast.

Erin: 3:48

very much. Thanks for having me. It's,

Yoyo: 3:51

well, we've been trying to do this for a little while because the award ceremony was a hell of a go.

Erin: 3:56

We're both exceptionally busy people.

Yoyo: 3:59

We are exceptionally in demand, I think we should say, rather than just exceptionally busy. First of all, I mean, look, we're going to talk about the award because that was awesome. I am never allowed as a judge to say who I voted for, but I thought you had a very exceptional, submission. I like to talk about, award nomination submissions as well. I remember I was at an awards ceremony recently and I bumped into a colleague and I'm going to try and tie him down to a podcast because he's also a judge. I said to him, you know what? Did you think about, the submissions this year, and we were shaking our heads and having a bit of a wobblehead moment, I'm thinking, I think we need to communicate, I think, as judges, what we need to see in award submissions. Think once people know what it is they need to put in, I'm sure everybody would want to do that. I think sometimes there's this kind of like, send a submission in and wing it. But yours was exceptional, I remember that. And Safer Business Network is something that a lot of people would probably have seen floating around on LinkedIn. They probably would have seen signs, they would have seen posts. So let's dig deep today and tell me how the Safer Business Network started.

Erin: 5:06

Well, you know, actually the Safer Business network happened many millions ago, to be honest, actually, going back to my first career back in the police force when I worked with, um, you know, Hannah Wadey exceptional, woman, who's the COO of, uh, safer business network. And, you know, she's always been one of my, um, key supporters. I've really looked up to her and she's really molded my career, which is absolutely fantastic. So when I started off with the police actually in licensing and partnership, uh, the safer business network, you know, sort of came together and Hannah was the lead on that. Um, so what it does is really they, um, it's the same business network is. They have um, business crime reduction partnerships across London. So company 50. and basically it's about bringing all partnerships between the police council and the business community together. You know, it's very intelligent led. It's about building platforms. It's about, identifying offenders. It's about how we support businesses. across London and how we apprehend those offenders, but also giving all that information, intelligence, support, training to the business that who signed up to us.

Yoyo: 6:18

So this stops that whole kind of like feeling alone, you know, no, no one's responding, we can't seem to get anything done, you know, that negative type of, so it stops all that because everybody, every business has got a person to connect with and who's accountable to a degree.

Erin: 6:36

Absolutely. And it's really difficult because if you're. It could be, you're a new business setting up and you don't know what to do if you, you know, you're being targeted. If we look at the news now about retail crime and the offenders and how aggressive it is. If you're a small little business, what do you do? But actually, if you're a larger organization, who we work with, we work with the Tyskos, Stainsbury's, et cetera, and Boots. But those small little businesses who need that support have to someday come to us and go, right, how, how do I do this? How do I apprehend that offender? How do I get that CBO, against that, how do I ban that person from my business? Or what crime prevention I put in place just to support my staff? Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? you can see there's just YouTube videos out there at the moment of what's happening. was in

Yoyo: 7:18

one of those little baby Tesco's and there are other supermarkets out there. And because it was near me and. While I was in there, these three teenage boys came in and there was a bit of a, there was a bit of a commotion because I remember sort of looking their way. And then they literally did that whole like run and they ran out, kind of knocking stuff out the way as they ran out the store. I looked at the lady who I know behind the till and I said, what was that about? She said, Oh, they come in every day and steal stuff. I was like, Really? It's madness, isn't it? I was just, I'm an ex police officer, I was also a bystander at that point, and I'm thinking, surely we're sending wrong messages out, and I'm not talking about criminalising children, I've always believed in the same with some of the other more wider global issues, that where ideology is wrong, you can't necessarily meet that with force. or the way that we've always had to meet things. Sometimes we have to meet ideology with a different ideology. This is what I like about the fact that the Safer Business Network is about the business community.

Erin: 8:23

And it is, it's absolutely led by that. It's led by the community. We listen, you know, to what their needs are. we're very intelligence led, uh, operations director, Adam, uh, is absolutely fantastic. There's a, you know, you've probably recently seen him in the news around the retail crime. It's about, you know, building those platforms, building that intelligence to see, right. Where is this happening? Because it's not just in London, these are linked to big gangs across,, nationally, and it's all connected. unfortunately, the offenders are also vulnerable, but the staff are also vulnerable. There's a massive interlink of, vulnerability, across everything from child exploitation to, modern slavery. There's lots of different individual. issues that is connected to it because people just think they come and commit theft. It's not just about committing theft. Is it because they're feeding their family? Have they been brought over here from another country? there's such a bigger picture to, these crimes, which is really unfortunate. I think what you just mentioned that. It's, that staff member just thinks it's the norm, but that's not okay at all because nobody wants to go to work fearing, if you're a customer, you're just working in customer service and you actually, you don't want to be fearful of going to work.

Yoyo: 9:35

The whole thing was quite uncomfortable but we're a little bit like that as Brits anyway I think when we see something going on. I've seen some great memes about how Brits respond when it comes down to something big going down right near you. We do have this kind of, oh my God, I can't believe I'm actually here in this space. I, what do I do? And I'm a kind of freezer as well, so I'll sit there and freeze. I don't, I'm like, you hear about these heroes that Yeah. leap in and do something that ends up being phenomenal and I'm not a leap in a person. Yeah. Just not, I guess really. What's changed in the world, and let's look at our own histories as children growing up, there's always been the old fashioned criminal, yeah, and to a degree sometimes there's been a criminal code and there's always been criminal ethics, especially when you look at prisons, we're both ex police, and sometimes as police officers you've got to respect a criminal for their own kind of individual integrity. Do you know what I'm saying? The criminals have their own code. I remember as well, dealing with criminals that were really genuinely victims of circumstance. And they triggered a whole different kind of sensitivity around how they landed where they did. Then you've got personal choice, all of those things that, criminologists will talk about a lot more about, the kind of criminal mindset, but nowadays. At this level, criminals are also victims, and it's something that I think I'm really glad that has been taken up, that we're not out to just penalise people for committing crime, we're there to understand the deeper issues. It's

Erin: 11:16

important, isn't it? Absolutely. There's so much safeguarding and, as with our BCRPs and our partners, it's not just about apprehending the offender, it's about actually what we do with that offender afterwards, are they homeless, do they need support, do they need to go into drug rehabilitation, it's not just about right, lock him up, stick him in prison. There's so much more to it. I don't think the demographic and the, you know, how apprehender works hasn't changed. I just think we've had so much. there's a massive increase in mental health. We're very much post COVID. That's caused many issues. Obviously there's leaving the EU, and there's lots of different things going on there, which is, which makes people's lives a little more difficult than what they used to be. you remember when we was police officers, we had that systematic thing of, you're nicked, you're going to prison. And actually, later in the years, it wasn't until we had to, we started to put all those support mechanisms into place to sort of help that offender, because it could be just that one time offender, actually something's happened, something circumstantial has happened in their life. Which has changed dramatically. Now, we're having to deal with offenders from across borders. We're having to, across other countries. And actually, it's understanding their language, understanding their behaviours, which has completely changed. So, I think it makes it a lot more difficult. If we think about it, if you're a police officer on, you know, it's just like daily, you've got to deal with language barrier, you've got to deal with vulnerability, where they come from, what's their background. So there's a lot more to it. Actually Safer Business Network helps out because we do kind of, we look at that offender, we look at their history, they look at where they come from, what is making them do that. It's a kind of a bit of a cruel world, isn't it really for everybody, if we

Yoyo: 13:07

think about it. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. I wake up some mornings, I'm one of these people who, you know, like even if you have a bit of a shit sad day, I kind of think, do you know what, just don't even give it more than five minutes, yo yo, because something really bad could happen. And then you'll be thinking, ah, you thought you had a bad day, this will give you a bad day. I've always, I've always believed in that mantra. It's like, the day you're driving in the middle of nowhere and you have a blowout on your tyre. It's the day that you were a bit sulky in the morning thinking, Oh, I've got to do this and not really appreciating life until that tire goes, you think, Oh, I was having a great morning until now. So I've always lived in that kind of way. I genuinely am probably more positive and optimistic than I am. I think I've definitely got quite a lot of high resilience. I think what we've, what I love to do when I love to advocate for is resilience, certainly within our young children and with our, the next gen, leaving the ladder down, especially next gen into the security industry. Then let's look at the further generation. We've got the alpha generation who will be emerging very soon onto the job market in a couple of years. And they're going to look at Gen X and think, even Gen X have got it all wrong. we're going to start to feel old by the way. Can't remember where I was going with this, I think the one thing I like to tell young people is, you've got to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. That's not to say that you should sustain things and pain and things that you shouldn't be going through, but let's face it, I think Resilience comes from being able to manage being uncomfortable. It's a huge, huge thing. Look, going back to, to our sort of understanding our victims, you've got communities of victims there in crime, and that's a much, much broader issue. It's not necessarily going to be managed with quick solutions. It requires a lot of community joined up thinking, which is where I think the mission here for safer business network to work with others to promote safety and security and reduce the impact of crime on businesses and the community they serve. So I take it in the businesses are also. more networks, they talk to each other more. Is that right?

Erin: 15:13

Yeah, absolutely. So, we work very close to the bids, as well, as well as the local authority and the police. Our partnership work is on a daily basis, it's always connecting with those businesses. It's going out. Face to face, talking to them, you know, finding out what's happening and that's the core of what we do is actually, we're a bit like silent assassins, we kind of go in, we talk to them, find out what's happening and, we are, we don't always shout about everything we do. But what we do is absolutely fantastic. we're only, we're a charity at the end of the day, we're a CIC. There's 22 of us now, which has grown throughout the last couple of years. I only rejoined the business, six months ago, which is very soon. I've always followed this story. Obviously, I've known Hannah for many years, and the journey of the organization has been absolutely phenomenal. It's a credit to the whole team. We've got such a mixed ages. We've got ex police officers. We've got people from, used to come out of university. We've got young females who are strong, who really want to make a difference to society. They've done criminology. We're currently, taking on some interns. We do all those massive Saturdays, we pull everybody together and go, right, what can we do to make this a better area? What lighting do we need? What CCTV do we do? How can we create safer environments? Because it's not always just about,, the criminals. It's about actually, I want to, how can I feel going from the shopping center back to my home? How can I feel safe? Yeah, and it's about sharing those good working practices. Luckily, I deliver on my Untraining and development manager for, say, the Business Network, which, which is a national arm. our BCP, you know, is predominantly been London, but, you know, ideally we're gonna grow so, but the national on, so I get to see everything happening everywhere else and it, it is a very similar story, from city to city.

Yoyo: 17:07

Do you feel more empowered being ex police and being civilian again, or do you miss the empowerment that you had being part of the police collective?

Erin: 17:18

Do you know what? I left my police career for love. Not many police officers can probably say that. And I had a fantastic career. Yes, it has. It has its ups and downs like any career. Yes, it has its bad eggs. And, but any organization has that. And sometimes it, it becomes very difficult. It becomes very difficult for people. I enjoyed my career. I did a lot of partnership working, which, as I like to engage with people. I'm very talkative and sometimes be told to shut up, but it's, it plays part of where the role I am now,

Yoyo: 17:51

I'm looking at the person you are now. I'm just thinking like me, I felt very different to everybody else. For the same reasons, because I was all about like, engaging partnerships and collaborating with people and how can we achieve this? And sometimes my colleagues just look at me and roll their eyes and say, you should be in social services. I'm like, no, I want to be a copper. I just think it's nice to, collaborate, treat people with respect. So I'm talking about sometimes the criminal element that I deal with.

Erin: 18:20

I think that's where people, I think the job role for the police officers have changed. And as we said, just earlier, I think there's a lot more to it than just going, right, here's the investigation. You're looking now into everybody's background, what's happening with who, whose family is member connected to do what's happened, where you're from, et cetera. it takes time. You've got your short term, we've got those one on one calls. You've got an hour to get to somebody. You've got to understand their whole life, get that down on paper and then think about what you're going to ultimately do where. I think what it has, it's really shaped me. When I left the police, I went into sales,

Yoyo: 18:53

What were you like, buy this, or I'll, or I'll, you, I'll, I know where you live, I have a very special set of skills. It is,

Erin: 19:01

it's really funny, I went into going selling, working for, Lyrico, but, and some other small largess, but do you know what they did? They used all my transferable skills, and it's really funny because there's lots of police officers in there,, some are specials as well, and the skills, I think the police officers get their transferable skills are really, can go into the security industry, can go into sales and, and then it can shape you to actually where you're going to end up. I actually really enjoyed sales. I went on to managing teams and that's where my, you know, first my training and development, years did start in the police, it didn't really, really happen until working in sales.

Yoyo: 19:42

When you were in the job, did you find that you were always able to talk to people in a certain way that got better results for you? Absolutely. I was the same and I could kind of like see ahead and I'm thinking, the boys are coming in the car. I know this is going to turn really nasty when they get here because it's going to get physical. And I used to say to offenders sometimes, Hey, listen, look, I'll jump in the car with me because that way we'll leave before the others all rock up. If you're not. compliant by the time they get here. I remember I had a female colleague with me, and he basically been committing an affray in a public place. We calmed him down and we got him alone. I just basically said, look, dude, seriously, come with us. We smell a lot better. And we're funnier. And he just started laughing, right. And my mate was laughing as well. I said, We'll stick you in the back with Angela she's a bag of jokes and we'll take you down the neck, but we've got to go there now. Otherwise it will be a different thing there was just this, I just knew the minute the men turned up, it was going to be all ego and bravado and get down, get down and all this kind of stuff. I just thought there is a different way of doing it. He did come with us. Handcuffs to the front. He chatted all the way to the nick. He was really nice to the custody sergeant and I just think that could have been so very, very different. A lot of what I did in the police was about using those skills, which, which by my colleagues, what always appreciated. Do you know what I mean? Go back to social services sort of thing, you know? Did you find that you had a similar

Erin: 21:13

experience? I do. It's really funny because where I did have a training now, we've just bought this in his conflict management and it's gone. The training has gone,, people want it more. I talk about the, the rational and emotional side and I think we probably sometimes think we're quite more emotional, but actually when I think we're quite rational,, let's just talk to that person on our level. And actually, we might be able to deal with it without, handcuffs on, being pushed to the floor, a fight breaking out, being spat on. Yeah, a rumble, that's what

Yoyo: 21:47

we used to call it.

Erin: 21:49

Yeah, the rumble, that's what it's about, you know, some of the right, this is what's happening before I even get there. This is what I'm going to do. And that's the emotional side, isn't it? Because, right, you've already got that, idea of how that person's already behaving. I

Yoyo: 22:03

can hear people as well thinking, well, you know, yo, yo, it's all well and good to have a nice pink and fluffy conversation with a guy who isn't carrying a weapon, but he was carrying a weapon. That's the point. he was carrying a weapon that could kill someone. But I think sometimes even offenders have been conditioned if they've been child offenders. They've been conditioned to responding to authority in the police in a certain way. And they get immediately very defensive. They know that you can see them shutting down. You can see their ability to almost like, this is what it is, nothing's going to change. They kind of lose this kind of optimism. I guess it's one of the simplest ways of saying it. And I think all we did was we just provided a different level of optimism that actually things don't have to necessarily shut down. Even shoplifters, you can have great relationships with them, and they'll sit and tell you, listen, I'm hungry today. I've got to get some food. I know of security officers and police who used to go into certain shops, which we won't say the names of, and say, Listen, have you got anything that's reached the sell by date? Can you give it to me? Because I've got some needy people that I'd really love to just hand some sandwiches out to. And these shops will say, yeah, cool. And it used to become a daily thing. Hey Bob, you can have these. are you giving it to the homeless? Yeah. I, to be honest with you, I am. I said, well, in that case, we'll give you some biscuits as well. You can have some of this. It used to be like, and I remember talking to security officer. Well, they don't come in a nick from my store because we have a great relationship with them and we give them some biscuits and we, we, we treat them like human beings and we understand they're needy and hungry. Think that comes back around, doesn't it, to thinking outside the box, which is what the Safer Business Network does, because the more heads you get around the table and the more you look ahead into how can we bring about great results without kind of necessarily taking people's legs out at the same time, it takes a lot of, critical thinking.

Erin: 24:00

It does. And it, and that's what it is. And I think you hit the nail on the head. We're dealing with human beings. It's very different for everybody else. Something's happening in that person's life, also it's about how we approach it, you know, if we're going gung ho, you're never going to get anything resolved, are you? If we're communicating with somebody in the way they can't understand our communication, we're never going to be able to deal with it.

Yoyo: 24:25

Yeah dealing with cross border crime is a different beast at the moment. There are a lot of entities there. There's a lot of organized crime a lot of these people they run like businesses you know, but just not very ethically. They have a chain of command, they have ways of communicating, they have code, they have certain conditions, they have rules, I think if we were just one England police force, maybe we wouldn't have so many cross border issues to deal with, we would just be dealing with crime.

Erin: 24:58

Yeah, I think it becomes very difficult, especially to take sharing data and stuff, where sometimes it makes it a little bit more messy, doesn't it? Yeah. That's where you're trying to unravel, who can I share this with, who can I do it just share with that person, but it's, we're all dealing with the same old shit. Yeah.

Yoyo: 25:16

Yeah. I remember the PMC, the police national computer being the most reliable way of nationally sharing information. So if you pulled over a car and maybe it's one up, two up, three up, and that's how we used to describe how many people we could see in the car. What you're doing is you're making a risk assessment. Then if there's a one up, you could normally do it yourself, especially if you were in the rural police or smaller towns, then if there were two up or three up, even you would make sure there was backup before you approach them. Maybe you would take a while to stop them. The PNC was always very reliable. You always knew if there was a mark on that car. If there was a marker on that person, it was always, always 100 percent reliable. That part of policing and sharing information, sharing intel was always 100 percent correct. But I don't understand why forces, when you look now, having stepped out of the police force or the police service, I don't see now why each police force has got its own intelligence system. I remember once having to, find out if there was a person at risk and I had to go to three other forces and the process of getting that information from three other forces at the time where PNN email was really in its immaturity, getting validated, getting someone to call you through the switchboard and connecting the call. That was if you happened to be in on a day shift and you could do something, I think the police have hindered themselves to a degree with a lot of very old legacy, archaic, old fashioned ways of doing things.

Erin: 26:44

Yeah, I think you're right in some circumstances. It is, it's difficult, isn't it? It becomes such a minefield of what you want to do because actually your risk assessment becomes very complicated, doesn't it? Or your intelligence finding becomes complicated and it becomes very mudded and, you probably, you know, you could be that police officer who just wants to do the right thing. You could be, you know that business who just wants to do the right thing, but you've gotta go through so many hoops just to get that result. Yeah, or just share that information back. I think there probably don't need to be massive changes, and it is very up and down, it sometimes builds what's the flavor of the month, and also we see, and good and actually which is fantastic we're seeing police officers being promoted aren't we, you know, continuously, especially at the senior management level, but then that continuity of that great work kind of stops and it has to start again with somebody else. All our work is about having consistency. We just want to have that consistent approach, but then if you start staking someone out of that, or you change an intelligence platform, or you put, you know, you, you having to deal with many different platforms across different forces, it just muddies the water. Yeah. I

Yoyo: 28:00

used to have a lot of police officers say to me, do you know what? Just don't go down that rabbit hole. Yeah. But yeah. Even though going down that rabbit hole was the right thing to do, I remember once, and this is fairly controversial, but I wanted, I raised the awareness, with my di my detective, inspector, that a suspect that I had for,, a rape., I'd gone and done due diligence, probably a little more than I needed to, but I went and did the neighborhood. I did it myself. I went and knocked on every door. I went to the nearby school. I spoke to the janitor, all of those, the caretaker, all those sorts of things. Cause I just had this really strong gut instinct that this guy was a real wrong. I managed to get several independent sources. of intelligence that, this man was up to no good. And particularly with kind of attempting to groom young females, certainly those girls under 16 years old. And when I took this intelligence to my DI, I said, he's already up for rape. I think we need to, look at more serious, actions or sanctions. I was basically told, you know, to stop going on a fishing expedition. Yeah. And I think the police are very limited and that was because of cost, right? There are so many times where you want to do the right DNA testing, but cost prevents the sort of extraordinary measures in, in doing that, even though it would ethically be the right thing to do. When you look back now, do you think there's anything that you wished was different? Being an ex police officer and being in the wider community, because I'm sure your skills are much appreciated in the wider community now.

Erin: 29:33

Yeah, I found it is very rigid, wasn't it? I think you said, right, you can only do it this way. And this is how you're going to deliver it. Well, actually, if it was more, if it was more open to new innovative ways back then, of right, actually, we want to get a great good result. But actually, let's look at different ways to get it. Simplifying the tools. Because as you said, there's so many different tools for the police out there. It's difficult, isn't it? So I wish back then it was simplified, better tools, constantly, you know, and always forever evolving. But we just, I think it just needed to be a bit more innovative, actually. It's good to see that the police have changed quite a lot now, hasn't it? I've left, I've been in there for 8 years now, nearly 9, I'm not telling my age, but it's, time flies, but it's, what I did love is that when I come back into this role,, I've come back and I'm dealing with the same people. Which is, that's awesome. It's awesome. It's really refreshing to hear someone, oh God, things are changing to you left. Which is nice to hear, these are businesses, these are you, you know, residents. And it is like, well, actually, it has, it changed a lot. I think it, it is just, it, it just needs to evolve,

Yoyo: 30:50

I think the police is only ever as good as it's people, in the same way that a business is only ever as good as it's people. I did feel sometimes that people that I was in the police with, were in the job for the wrong reason, they wanted to drive cars fast, they wanted to wear funky shades and look cool. I'm thinking that's not really being a police. That's not really. And then there were, there's an element of that, certainly with the firearms department. You find that everywhere across the force. It's like, you've got to look like Robocop to go into firearms. I think there were other departments that had their own certain ways of looking, feeling, doing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But I think like you, I was always the person that liked to get out there. Certainly, I should have been probably in neighborhood policing. I think probably I should have, but I really enjoyed the investigative side of work. But the way that the neighborhood policing used to get talked about by other cops was awful. It was like, all he does is go around having cups of tea with old ladies all day. Actually, no, he's not. He's gathering intelligence on his community. You arsewipe. Yes. It's like, he's, that's why he's got a belly because he's all those ginger nut he's having from Mrs Grace's house, all that kind of stuff. And I'm thinking, it was more than that. There was a lot of envy there. And there was a lot of, even within the police, a lot of misunderstanding about true purpose and

Erin: 32:06

Yeah. And I think And do you know what? There's so many fantastic officers, you know, in the last, you know, six months, I've come across so many, especially in the Met and across other forces and sorts of services as well. And there's so many good ones and they are neighborhood policing, they are licensing, and that's where you go and learn, your rational and emotional skills because you're dealing with people's real lives, there and then you're getting time to know them. You're dealing with the businesses, you're listening to everybody who's on that shop, in that shop, you're listening to you actually, who's on the ground, who's committing those offenses and you're understanding the patterns. I think there's something you know when we first started we had to start off in working in neighborhood teams. And I felt that was really fundamental of what we did. Unfortunately I think people want to come in and go right I want to be superintendent within one year. Um, but

Yoyo: 32:59

I pity the fool who thinks like

Erin: 33:01

that, but you can't, you've got to grow, you know, you've got to understand, what's happening on the ground and work your way up because it is fundamental and it has an impact on all those, all those roles you go into. Because you'll find that 10 years later, you're probably still dealing with that same person.

Yoyo: 33:18

Yeah, I found that leadership in the police as well was a bit hit and miss. So there were some phenomenal, extraordinary leaders that I think if I got remotely near to, I probably would have stayed in the police a lot longer. I think the sad thing is, I think there's like one in eight. What's really worth following really worth, the blood, sweat and tears really worth the late hours really because they were just extraordinary exemplary people. I've got to that stage now where because I think I left 16 years ago. I'm thinking most of the people that I was with who were kind of counting the days down to the retired or retiring very, very soon now. and starting second careers. But I think what we've talked about today is that there is life after a police career, no matter how long you were in. Those skills that you learn, the resilience that you learn, the tactical, the operational planning, the team building, the communication skills, the out the box thinking. I mean, just those alone are phenomenal skills to have that you learn in the police.

Erin: 34:22

Absolutely. This is what I bring into my training because, you know, I think sometimes you have to be careful where actually training is about engagement, isn't it? Uh, having, being flexible, listening and understanding and empathizing. We don't go and train, you know, listen, Oh, thanks very much and move on. It's actually, let's understand where that's come from. And I think that's why, I'm going to go into it as our way to train our welfare and vulnerability engagement train., it's already reached 17, 000 people it's not just about coming in and enforcing, right, you need to lesson about vulnerability. People get to share their circumstances. We get young females share that they've been spiked, that they've been vulnerable. it's about professional and personal training as well. And it's about understand why, what makes someone vulnerable. If we think about all those categories, because anybody can become vulnerable at any time, moving to, what do we do with someone who's vulnerable, and what interventions do we put in place, it's not always alcohol related, it's also about people's mental health, unfortunately,, 80 percent of women have been sexually harassed, how do we deal with that, how do we identify those perpetrators, how do we make those changes, I always talk about why you've been, the proactive side of dealing with vulnerability and actually, you know, we also train ask for Angela, but that's the reactive side because we don't really want anybody to get to that point where they're having to ask for Angela because all that proactive thing of asking those questions, engaging, saying hello, hello, how are you? How's things? And like you said, you mentioned the beginning, you talk about the retail thing is being that active bystander. It's really, really important because we want to, everybody wants to do good, don't they? Yeah,

Yoyo: 36:07

I don't think a lot of human beings really want to see other human beings struggle. I worry about the apathy sometimes that sets in, when we've all worked very hard to earn what we have and live in the lifestyle that we have worked hard to choose to be in, I will never ever, I think sometimes you've only got to lose a job or get made redundant or something like that to realize, Oh, I don't know where my next income's coming from. I need to like not eat this and I need to now eat that. And then you then start to have a different mindset. You think, crikey, can you imagine living a life where you don't know where your next meal's coming from? Right. I think sometimes we lose the connectivity, but I think as humans, we lose connectivity a lot with other humans. I think it's difficult sometimes being with so many humans. And that is another subject. Erin, I could go down several rabbit holes with you, my friend. Hey, listen, ex police officers, be really good. I'm not anti police. I'm really not, just for the record. I am pro reform. I am massively pro reform and pro new police ideology and pro new police vision and pro new police methodologies. That's what my position is. I think you've done absolutely phenomenal. Congratulations on your David Clarke award. We only have the best here. It's been a pleasure having you on the Security Circle.

Erin: 37:23

Ah, thank you. If anybody does want to come to us, come to saverbusiness. org. uk for Additional training and you know this year people have asked for e learning from us as well Nationally people asked for that. So really exciting Thanks for having me. No,

Yoyo: 37:36

we'll put all of the links and bios and hashtags and everything On the podcast bio section so everyone can follow up and reach out. Please do because Erin is smashing. Thank you. Erin