PC George Kindred is one of three women dog handlers in the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Dog Policing Unit, and has recently joined the unit with her dog, one year old PD Jax.
I come from a policing family, as my father was a police officer, and it was a natural thing to follow in his footsteps. I was a police cadet as a teenager and then I became a PCSO and was in the Bedford town centre team from 2007.
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PC Jeevan Sahota is one of Bedfordshire Police’s Accelerated Detective Programme students. Last year he investigated a harassment case which resulted in two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for a persistent offender.
I was given this case in March 2020, when I was assigned to the Crime Investigation Team.
At this point the victim reported that she had been receiving threatening and upsetting text messages, emails and even letters by post, for three months. There was no way to immediately link the online messages to one person as they were all sent from different phone numbers.
The messages contained demands for money and threats that a compromising video of the victim would be released to her friends and family. In fact, the video never existed, but the offender kept sending upsetting and offensive messages.
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A survivor of sexual abuse as a very young child has spoken about how keeping her secret shaped her life, and how much brighter she feels since she found the courage to speak out.
It was 1995, and Amy* was just three years old and sitting on her grandfather’s lap when he first touched her inappropriately during a tickling game.
This abuse went on practically every week until she was nine, and even involved him photographing and videoing her, despite her asking him to stop.
And with his words that it was her fault, and that she wouldn’t be believed, hanging over her, she didn’t tell a soul for 27 years.
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