Experienced, yes;
emotionless, no
As a veteran crime-scene examiner working out of Port Lincoln police station, Senior Constable Marty Gornall has plenty of experience on his side. Down on the front line, he has so often played his role among all the horrors and all the emotion – as have many of his fellow examiners. He has, time and time again, seen the mutilated dead, the traumatized, the grief-stricken, but also the stoic, the brave and the dedicated.
Given some cops’ vast experience, one is sometimes inclined to think: “Well, they’ve seen and done it all so many times before that it must surely just be routine by now.”
But let us not downplay the impact of any of the horrors – no matter how recurring – on either crime-scene cops, or any other experienced operational police, in the field.
Consider the frightful circumstances Snr Const Gornall faced during the first examination he undertook on Black Tuesday. As he pored over one smouldering crime scene with two dead bodies, he got word of another – in which two children had died – and learned that his North Shields house faced obliteration by the fire.
Despite what would have come as an emotional overload to most, Gornall stayed committed to his job. He drew on the “typical copper culture” he referred to in Cops’ Black Tuesday with the dead, and his valuable experience.
But he later spoke of tears that came as he gazed at newspaper pictures of the children he had seen in death. He also spoke of his “brilliant” wife, whose support allowed him to release his thoughts and feelings.
Clearly, experience helped Snr Const Gornall – as it has helped others – to get through a day on a job that most outside policing could not endure. But no police officer should expect his or her experience, regardless of its vastness, to serve as a kind of immunizing shield against all measure of emotional impact.
Nor should the community fall into the trap of thinking that police somehow become desensitized to horror as they see more of it. Yes, cops become somewhat hardened, but they remain forever human.
And neither police, nor the communities they protect, would be better served by a force of emotionless cops anyway.
Two states’ tragedies
The recent tragic deaths of police officers in Victoria and South Australia have saddened the entire Australian police community.
Senior Constable Tony Clarke was shot by a motorist he had stopped on Warburton Hwy, Launching Place, on April 24. His friend and colleague, Snr Const Rennie Page, was hit by a car on the Hume Hwy near Benalla on April 26.
SA husband and wife, Senior Constable Thea Faithfull and Constable James Karpany, died when their car ran off the road in the Adelaide Hills on May 15.
The Police Journal extends its deepest sympathy to the family and colleagues of all four officers.
