What do you say?

Well, it's half past one in the morning and like a lot of people I've been glued to the news because of the series of murders in Cumbria today. It will undoubtedly be the focus of the UK's media for days, and probably some of the world's media too.
I can remember exactly when I heard about Dunblane, because I was just sitting down to write a letter to my future husband, and gave up and wrote to "the people of Dunblane" instead. Only to ease my grief, of course.
I cannot know how it feels to lose a family member, friend, or even acquaintance to random, violent crime. It has never happened to me. But I have spent time with families to whom it had happened, and their grieving was terrible to me. However, at those times I was in a position to "do" something; now I am not. So I have only my thoughts, and my prayers, for all those who have lost someone in today's spree killing.

I can empathise, however, with one group of people who were intimately involved in what happened today. The police officers and the control room staff. Cumbria Constabulary is a very small police force - I had occasion to work for them during an operation near Penrith. And I know exactly what it is like when an initial report of a shooting comes in, and what has to be done. For a small force without many (hardly any, I would guess) permanently ready firearms units it would have been difficult. And then the control room would have taken another call, and another, and then another about a different location - in the news one senior officer was speaking of 30 different crime scenes. This continues for several hours. All whilst an armed man who has just committed murder is on the loose. To try and co-ordinate everything required for numerous murder investigations whilst still pursuing, as the priority, a man who appeared intent on killing anyone who took his eye, would have been an utter nightmare, and at points, I am sure, unarmed officers would have been doing the looking. Other officers would have been trying to save, or comfort, the injured, as the police usually arrive before the ambulance or paramedic.

At times, I am also sure, Cumbria Constabulary would have been running out of officers, so those doing a job in one place would have had to be moved on to a higher priority action.

So I can truly feel for the officers involved, those who must have felt like headless chickens at some point and those who endangered themselves in ways they probably never thought of at the time. My empathy and sympathy, as well as my thoughts and prayers, are with the women and men in blue, for whom the unexpected happens everyday and who on this day faced something few of us will ever have to, and most of us never choose to.