It might be four months on since the killing of Brevet Sergeant Jason Doig but hearts still ache and mourning continues. These understandable human reactions are quiet and private in some quarters and overt in others.
And they continue because no on-duty police deaths are ever done and dusted. Not for those of us left behind.
We carry on with our lives and careers because we’re people who live up to our responsibilities. But deaths like Jason’s don’t just, after a time, disappear from our consciousness.
We might not have known Jason on a personal level or partnered him in a patrol car, but we counted him as a brother. And because he was one of us, a member of our police family, we can and should expect the pain to linger.
I saw that lingering pain first-hand in 2002, when we lost Holden Hill motorcycle officer Senior Constable Bob Sobczak.
It was my first experience of an on-duty death in the police family, which I had joined just five years earlier. I never saw the anguish come to a sudden, miraculous end with the conclusion of Bob’s funeral. That didn’t happen.
The bereaved were stuck with their grief for a long time afterward. And it’s the same now, months down the track from Jason’s death.
Of course, members with almost 40 years’ service have had to absorb the murders and other on-duty deaths of their colleagues since 1985. Experience might just have made them the best equipped, mentally and emotionally, to confront the reality of another killing last November.
Although, for some, losing a third colleague to a killing in under 40 years likely came with even more intense sorrow.
And one has to wonder about the impact of that November night on far less experienced members. Indeed, the least experienced in the entire job at the time were Course 71 recruits. They had begun their police lives at the academy just two weeks before Jason’s death.
How must those recruits, and their families, have felt? The reality of police life could not, in just a few days, have hit them any harder. And who would have blamed any of them for either a passing thought or serious rethink about their career choice?
Even the critical incidents which don’t claim police lives come with lasting effects. One member, not yet out of his probation, suffered a gunshot wound to the face in the mid-1980s.
I know a couple of his old coursemates. One of them said of the shooting: “I saw him (my coursemate) lying in a hospital bed the next day. He was so badly banged up and unable even to speak. That image has stayed with me to this day.”
The depth of the impact of our loss of Jason is still evident – and compelling, despite the passage of time. But we, like other members in the past, have no choice but to grapple with our ongoing grief and simultaneously carry out our duties.
Few, if any, other professions exact such an emotional toll. But our members, and those who support them from behind the scenes, are supremely resilient. That shines through now, as they both mourn and serve.
To view police officers through one lens is to see them as figures of authority and duty. But remember, we’re people before we’re police. The unique demands of our profession sometimes overshadow that human element.
Ultimately, none of us should be concerned by our ongoing sorrow. First, because it is entirely natural in a police community as tight and as supportive as ours. And, second, because we step up for each other whenever it comes to not only professional but also personal struggles.
Those who most need our continuing support now are those who were closest to Jason – his family, of course, and his immediate workmates. Time will give them relief but, for now, their grief is certainly not over.
By caring for them, we honour Jason.
