My old partner finished his days on the driving school after 25 years operational (he had to suffer me as his crewmate for 12 years so went for a rest
) and we had a golden rule that on the bike I was the boss and in the car he was the boss, simply because I had the higher mark on the bike and he had the higher mark on the car. It worked very well in terms of a partnership and we always stuck our nose in where it wasn't welcome and dealt with the majority of bad crashes that came in when we were on(bearing in mind that we covered a big chunk of a county as opposed to a town like local plod.
Anyway.....I had lunch with my old mate a few months ago. He retired but stayed on as a civilian instructor and saw (in his words) a decline in the quality of copper coming through.
He had one advanced crew who were awaiting posting to a Traffic base pending them passing their advanced course, and there was one individual who really had the qualities to obtain a class 1 even though the class 1 and 2 designation no longer exists.
He sailed through the course and was subsequently posted to a traffic base in the southern region of the force.
3 months later my mate called in to the local nick in the south and there he saw the outstanding student without his white cap top and without his hi viz.
Long story short, it transpired that having passed the course and been posted, he had not realised that in many instances he would be first on scene at the catastrophic crashes and would have to see and deal with some particularly nasty sights. He decided that was not for him and requested a transfer back to division.
When my mate asked him how he dealt with such incidents on division, his reply was "I just designate a junior officer to deal with it"
My mate was stunned...
Makes you wonder how he would have dealt with the likes of Hungerford and Michael Ryan or the M4 crash the following year that me and my partner were first on scene at and we watched 26 people burn to death