July 2000 Volume 81 Number 7 "serving the protectors"
By Brett Williams

Ever The Caring Cop

A city cop was recently shocked silent when the Rotary Club of Unley presented him with its 22nd Police Officer of the Year award. Today, he reflects on the deeds for which he never expected such a prize.

enior Constable Ian Drummond has felt the agony of three child cancer deaths in just 16 months. Brynn, Josh and Shanice were not his own children, but had a special place in his heart.

He had grown deeply attached to them through Bluey Day events and frequent visits to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital cancer ward, Brookman. Their tragic passing drew the burly street cop into battle with his own emotions.

But no emotional challenge could make Drummond deviate - even briefly - from his work as a self-appointed carer of and fundraiser for cancer-stricken children.

“When I lost (nine-year-old) Brynn earlier this year,” he says, “his parents asked me to talk at his funeral, and that was pretty hard. A lot of the emotion you hold in, (but) sometimes you need to release it.

“(Seven-year-old) Josh passed away last year and I went to see Patch Adams. It was only when I saw that film that I realized I hadn’t grieved him properly, and then I had a few troubles with my eyes ‘leaking’.

“At certain times it will just be triggered and away you go - you’ll release it. But you need to be strong for the parents to show them your support.”

Shanice was a three-year-old Aborigine. She had brought Drummond some hope when, in mid-1999, she “started to come good”. She even attended last year’s Bluey Day and shaved the head of Elizabeth community constable, John Rigney.

Soon after, however, her condition declined. Desperate appeals to remote-area communities for a bone marrow cross-match proved fruitless. Shanice died in Darwin last November.

But caring for children who teeter so delicately between life and death is, for 43-year-old Drummond, no misery.

“It’s rewarding,” he says. “You can bring a bit of light into their lives while they’re in there (hospital), undergoing ‘chemo’. It’s nice to see smiles on their faces and have a joke with them.

“Even when they’re pretty much out of it, you can still see a little smile. You sit on the bed and talk to them and you know they’re appreciating it. They think it’s pretty special to get a police officer coming in and talking to them.

“It’s just a nice feeling that you’re able to do something for them, or be there with them and show support. It’s a pretty traumatic time for them.”

British-born Drummond has always been “stirred to help people”. Even as a schoolboy, he helped raise funds for Bangladeshi famine victims. And, before his life as cop, he supported a workmate who was losing his child to leukaemia. Being unable to provide more than just that support, however, made him feel “pretty hopeless”.

Later, as a cop, he saw a bulletin board notice at the IMVS (Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science) seeking bone marrow donors for a research programme. He joined - to no one’s surprise - but could only participate until he was 40.

Drummond then saw Bluey Day as the next avenue through which he could help others. He registered to participate and travelled to Sydney for the first national head-shave in 1996. He has, since then, been a constant visitor to Brookman and Ronald McDonald House.

His own head has been shaved eight times for Bluey Day, and on other occasions simply to promote the event.

For these efforts - as well as his work with Blue Light and SAPOL’s schools programme - Drummond was last month presented with the Police Officer of the Year award.

After his then boss, Supt Milton Clark, told him he had won the award, he could barely speak. “People said it was the first time they had heard me be quiet,” he quips.

“I was overawed. I just do what I do and don’t really expect anything for it. But it’s recognition of the fact that there are lots of coppers, like myself, who do things like Bluey Day and Blue Light, and go into schools.

“They do things which are not necessarily the expectation of the job, so it’s nice that the community - through Rotary - has accepted and acknowledged that.”

A latecomer to law enforcement, Drummond had always been “interested” in a police career. He joined SAPOL in 1986, completed a six-month training course and was first posted to the Communications Branch.

He soon moved to operational work with Para Hills patrols, followed by stints through the ’90s with the Police Aide Unit and Multi-Cultural Services. From 1998, he spent two years based at Elizabeth and was last month transferred to Tea Tree Gully patrols.

Says Drummond of policing: “I love it. It’s the ability to help people, and it’s a good feeling if you occasionally get a couple of crooks out of the way and stop some deviant behaviour.”

And police work is far removed from Drummond’s previous jobs as a clerk and insurance salesman before 1986.

“It’s the only job where I’ve continuously looked forward to going to work, and come home feeling that I’ve achieved something,” he says.

As a regular speaker at northern-suburbs schools, Drummond has relished his opportunities to “break down barriers” between children and police. Himself a father of two, he says many children have only ever seen police in circumstances as traumatic as their parents’ arrest.

And, as many have never even talked to a police officer, Drummond allows them to question him on any issue. Some child attitudes, however, remain hostile.

“But by the end of it,” Drummond explains, “unless you’ve got somebody who’s particularly negative, most of them are pretty responsive. With the older kids, you quite often can get them to look at situations from a totally different perspective. We need to be open to the younger people.”

Now, from his Tea Tree Gully post, Drummond hopes to build on a connection he developed through Brynn with Wynn Vale Primary School. He also hopes to work with Golden Grove High School students, and has wasted no time making SAPOL aware of the area’s need for a Blue Light facility.

“If you can see an opportunity to address issues with local kids,” he says, “it’s worth doing.”

Meanwhile, Drummond says he is unlikely ever to leave policing for another career. “I’m quite happy to stay where I am,” he says. “I’ll just keep going as I am and, at some stage, they’ll put me out to pasture.”

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