Reflections on Operational Experience

This week I did some unexpected maths.

I joined the police on 21 September 1991.

I retired on 2 October 2021.

In total, I spent 10,969 days as a police officer.

By 9 May 2027, I will have spent the same number of days not being one.

That "non-police" time includes my childhood, my twenties before joining, and now this second professional chapter.

The numbers made me pause.

Thirty years in policing, much of it in serious sexual crime and child protection, gives you a particular vantage point.

You see systems at their best.

You also see them when they are fragmented, slow or unintentionally harmful.

You see what happens when:

And you see what happens when professionals align around a shared purpose.

Over time, one thing becomes very clear:

Most harm caused by systems is not intentional.
It is structural.
It sits in process gaps, cultural inconsistencies and unclear accountability.

What 10,969 Days Show You

When I retired in 2021, I didn't leave the purpose behind.

But I did change my seat at the table.

Operational policing is about response.

Strategic reform is about design.

This is slower work.

Less visible work.

But arguably more preventative work.

Because if we design systems well, fewer children experience avoidable harm in the first place.

Today, through TICCS, my work focuses on reducing re-traumatisation through:

It is system redesign in practice.

And it requires more than goodwill.

It requires:

Those are lessons that 10,969 days in policing taught me very clearly.

There is sometimes a misconception that Bairns' Hoose is about buildings. It isn't.

It is about coordinated response.