Today at school we met CJ who is a police officer. What type of police work does she do? She works on the frontline helping people in need and responding to their 111 emergency calls. CJ told us that her section protects and serves the community like: helping the eldery cross roads, taking care of people, road policing, patrolling neighbourhoods and responding to emergencies.
She talked a lot about the values that police must follow every day in their job. Their values are: Respect, Empathy, Commitment, Diversity, Professionalism, Integrity. This week, our hapori is focusing on Courageousness. Police have to be courageous everyday. Every day they manage tricky situations that would be scary to normal people. They need to be respectful of the person that they talk to and be respectful of their property and belongings and where they are from. Just like we are trying to be respectful of each other in school every day.
Empathy is about walking in another person’s shoes. You notice what they are going through and try to understand their situation. Police have to do this everyday, if two people are having an argument, they would recognize the situation and try to de-escalate it.
Commitment is when you stay on task, don’t muck around and don’t do whatever you want. Diversity comes around a cop every day, diversity is different people believing in different things, but that’s ok because we are all different in many ways. Being professional is what every person with a job has to do, and if you’re not professional then you might get fired.
Integrity is when you do the right thing even though nobody is watching and you do it because it’s the right thing to do. That is what cops show/do every day and their equipment are: turnikit, handcuffs, pepper spray, radio, taser and sometimes a glock.
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