An officer I used to work with a couple of years ago was working station officer a few months ago. A very boring post, with little in the way of positive distraction, apart from occasional stray dogs that are brought in and the usual drunks that sometimes come in to the office for a sing, shout, fight, or all three.
This officer was doing the usual thing of desperately trying to find anything on the intranet of any interest to while away the shift, when a woman came in holding the hand of a ten year old boy.
The woman, one of our past 'customers,' marched straight up to the desk and asked the officer if she could use the metal detector. This was when the officer realised that the woman had obviously had previous contact with the police - we keep hand held metal detectors in the custody area which we use for searching our wonderful prisoners. The officer, expecting something to break the monotony of his shift, popped through to custody and brought the 'wand' back.
Before doing anything with the wand, he asked the lady why she wanted it. The woman explained that she had seen her son swallow an AA battery.
She had taken her son to A&E, who had checked him and told her not to worry; so she had come to the Police station to ask the officer to use the wand to find out where the battery was now...
Suffice to say, we did not succeed where the medical professionals had failed.
