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The PCOs and The Drowning Boy

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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    One to radio and one to go in.

    I accept that it can be hard to find someone once they're under water, it's even harder if you're on the bank.

    Maybe not .. if you're stood on the bank looking for signs of life you can see a wide area, if you're in the water you can see a smaller area.

    If anyone should have been in the water it should be the two fisherman they were first on the scene ... if they managed to save the sister then they would have been the first to have a chance of saving the boy.

    I imagine several minutes would have passed before the officers got to the banks of the water, only takes a few minutes to drown.

    What I wanna know is where were the parents when all this happened?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    no in the bank you could maybe get to the person who is drowning easier. and if the witnesses saw where the boy went in they should have went in after. and whos to say that the pond/lake was cold or not. the witnesses could have at least thrown in a bouy.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    yea it would, thats what im trying to say what the problem is. there are not enough good samaratins. sometimes if your a good samaratin and you get sued by the person you saved, that adds to the problem.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Given that that the general thrust of this five page thread has been couched in terms of whether the PCSOs should attempt to save a drowning person or not, this will surely be an unwelcome addition, but would I be right in thinking that no-one should have been swimming in this flooded mine shaft in the first place? Were there life-belts, with lines, strategically placed for use in the event of an accident? Was a lifeguard on hand? Was there any adults on hand to supervise these children, and had a police officer or PCSO turned up in less desperate circumstances, would they have immediately ordered any swimmers out of the water?

    If swimming was prohibited in that place, it casts a very different light on things. When somebody falls into a pond, or a river, then sure, you might feel an obligation to render what assistance you can. The PCSOs, arriving at a scene where youths were in the habit of regularly ignoring warnings about swimming there, and learning that such a youth, as far as they knew, had disappeared beneath the water some minutes earlier, might very well have been reluctant to risk themselves too. The police authority, it appears to me, are trying to be tactful about this affair, because a boy has died, but in private, they may very well be wondering when the parents of these children are going to take some responsibility for not warning their children away from the 'pond' in the first place?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    At my old house there used to be a small lake very close, that used to be a mine shaft that had flooded. From the outside it looked very calm and very serene. The 2 barb wire fences that had been erected around it painted a different picture.
    Flooded mine shafts are extremely dangerous places, usually bottomed by quick sand, standing in one despite it not looking very deep is very stupid indeed. This one might not have been so dangerous, but there will be a reason why the anglers and PCSO's were reluctant to wade in.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    When I think of a pond I think of a plastic lined pool of water, intentionally placed there for the purpose of catching frogspawn in little nets and watching big fish swim around with little water skating things on the top- I would jump in one of those to fetch a child.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    katralla wrote: »
    When I think of a pond I think of a plastic lined pool of water, intentionally placed there for the purpose of catching frogspawn in little nets and watching big fish swim around with little water skating things on the top- I would jump in one of those to fetch a child.

    Go on the BBC website:

    - large lake, about the size of a football field
    - former quarry, very very deep and quicksand at the bottom
    - hadn't been seen for quarter of an hour before PCSOs arrived. Where would you start?

    I think it's another case of people expecting the services to be super people.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well you cnat save the person without almost killing yourself. it is not procedure to go out in water.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It seems that most of the people who were happy to slate the PCSOs for not taking the action they themselves are certain they would have taken, have no views about the Wigan community's attitude to use of the 'pond'. 'The Moral Maze' just started again yesterday, with the subject of whether doctors should honour 'living wills' and allow patients to die. I don't much like Melanie Phillips, but I can see her doing a number on that mother... 'I would have jumped in...' 'Well, why didn't you jump in, then? Where were you when your children were ignoring safety warnings? Did you bring them up to be disobedient, or just unable to read?'
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The death of the boy shows exactly why the PCSOs were right to not go jumping straight into the lake, to be quite honest. Instead of having one person to try and rescue, there would have been 3 or 4.

    Given that the boy had been submerged for some time, and nobody could give an accurate positioning of where he sank, any "brave" jumping into the lake would have been futile, pointless, and downright dangerous. It's not like he was 5 feet from the bank waving his arms.

    Without the correct equipment the PCSOs could have died too, and I fail to see how putting someone in a dangerous position for little benefit would do anyone any good.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    Without the correct equipment the PCSOs could have died too, and I fail to see how putting someone in a dangerous position for little benefit would do anyone any good.

    Just wish other people would pick up on this and not just the headline. The Stun has been particularly virilent in it's ill-informed waffle.

    I should lose my job apparently because of 2 pcso's god-knows how many miles away.
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