1 A difficult conversation

Imagine you’re a police officer attending a meeting in a local community centre. You’re the only police officer attending and you’re wearing your uniform, so it’s obvious that you’re a police officer. When you get to the centre, only a few people have arrived so far. You get a cup of tea, walk over to a man in his forties who is just sitting down and introduce yourself by saying, ‘Hi, I’m [your name]. It’s nice to meet you. Have you had an OK journey getting here?’

The man turns to you and says, ‘Sorry but I’ve got nothing to say to a police officer.’ He then turns away from you and doesn’t make further eye contact with you.

What could you do to progress this situation? Make a couple of notes against each of the four questions below. (Alternatively, you might find it useful to write down your responses on a sheet of paper that you can refer to later in this course.)

1. Putting yourself in the role of the community police officer, what would you want to get out of the situation?

2. How would you ‘diagnose’ the behaviour of the community member towards you? What behaviours do you think they are displaying towards you?

3. What do you think might be the reasons for them responding that way? Try to generate a few different ideas about what might be going on for them to have reacted this way.

4. Spend a couple of minutes thinking about what you might want to say in reply and why. What are the exact words you would want to say in response?

You will refer to this activity at the end of the course so please ensure you have saved all your responses.