CHIEF Inspector Chris Foster reflects on a very busy period for South Yorkshire Police working across Barnsley.
IT has been a busy couple of weeks, and I would like to begin by expressing my condolences to the family of Jacqueline Wileman, who was tragically killed in Brierley and to pass on heartfelt sympathy from every one of our officers and staff working across Barnsley.
It brings home how quickly lives can change in the blink of an eye and makes you appreciate life that little bit more. Jacqueline’s family are in our thoughts.
Some of the aftermath of the incident was shared on social media and one of the good things about this is the ability of the community to come together to express their support in these situations, as we have seen over the past couple of weeks.
Many send messages of sympathy or support whilst others commence fundraising, which shows the true community spirit and compassion of the good people of our town.
It is a forum for shared discussion, an outpouring of emotion and hopefully some comfort to those people who may be affected. It is also good for ensuring that we can share information, quickly and effectively, about important issues within our community, for example circulating images of someone who has been involved in crime or pictures of missing people who may be at risk of harm.
It is amazing how quickly a picture or a story can spread and it has helped us massively in locating people and identifying criminals in recent incidents.
On the other hand, it can be divisive and unhelpful when people spread rumours or pass comments about incidents of which they have no knowledge.
It is a difficult situation to know exactly what to release in order to ensure that victims or their families are not upset, to ensure that cases which are going to court are not compromised, yet provide enough information to make sure people still feel safe and confident in the police response.
In recent incidents in the town centre, no matter what is released, it is tempting for people to make up their own minds, or assume there has been a ‘cover up’, if later statements differ from the early rumours on social media.
Others believe more detailed information should be released more quickly.
Some have criticised me on Twitter for thanking my officers for the hard and often dangerous work they have undertaken but I will continue to praise my officers for the jobs they do.
They place themselves in harm’s way, day in, day out in an effort to keep the local community safe.
What people often do not see are the number of officers who volunteer to stay on duty long past the end of their shift, or come into work on a day off because they feel they can help in response to incidents the like of which we have seen recently.
Many of my officers have protected scenes for hours, leaving small numbers of officers to attend the immediate response incidents which continue to come in.
In tragic circumstances, we see the best of people and I have seen the best of my cops in the past few weeks.
They too have been affected by these incidents. There have been tears, anger, frustration and grief, but all of them do their job with pride and professionalism.
I am proud of my teams of officers across Barnsley and I would ask that you are too.
