When Jade finally achieved her dream of becoming a detective, she discovered that the reality wasnât quite as she'd imagined. Living the Dream: Confessions of a Trainee Detective offers a gripping and unfiltered look at the hidden realities of life as a detective in training. With unflinching honesty, Jade pulls back the curtain on her journey within Thames Valley Police, exposing the camaraderie and conflicts, the pride and frustrations, the adrenaline-fuelled moments, and the thankless tasks.
This powerful memoir will captivate, enlighten, and take you far beyond TV's glamour and heroics. Join Jade on a journey that is eye-opening, deeply personal, and profoundly humanâas she discovers what it truly means to live the dream.
When Jade finally achieved her dream of becoming a detective, she discovered that the reality wasnât quite as she'd imagined. Living the Dream: Confessions of a Trainee Detective offers a gripping and unfiltered look at the hidden realities of life as a detective in training. With unflinching honesty, Jade pulls back the curtain on her journey within Thames Valley Police, exposing the camaraderie and conflicts, the pride and frustrations, the adrenaline-fuelled moments, and the thankless tasks.
This powerful memoir will captivate, enlighten, and take you far beyond TV's glamour and heroics. Join Jade on a journey that is eye-opening, deeply personal, and profoundly humanâas she discovers what it truly means to live the dream.
I didnât grow up wanting to be a police officer, particularly. There arenât family photos tucked away of me in a kidâs police officer costume arresting my parents or giving my teddy bears parking tickets. I first decided I wanted to be a police officer, and specifically a detective, at university. I had studied Criminology, and on my course there had been lots of staff who were retired police officers. They talked about it so passionately, and with such love for the job, that I was hooked; it was all I wanted to do. I was excited at the idea of doing a job thatâs so important, where you need skills and knowledge to gather evidence, piece things together, and solve cases. I wanted to be able to support people in what may be the worst moments of their lives. It seemed like an endlessly exciting and rewarding job to me.
I started applying for jobs after uni, but I confess that I didnât get in straight away. In fact, I failed a few applications. Eventually, the Detective Constable Degree Holder Entry Programme, or DC DHEP, came up on my radar.
The DC DHEP had always been controversial â every time I saw an application posted on social media, it was closely followed by a stream of negative comments. It was controversial because many officers believed that it was wrong to recruit people directly as a detective. Before the scheme, the role of detective was previously reserved for officers who had proven they could handle policing the streets in uniform and had passed that baptism of fire. The thought that a bunch of us would pretty much completely skip that uniform policing phase (we would only do a brief period in uniform), caused disagreement at best and bitterness at worst among many officers. They seemed to believe that, because they were made to suffer the rigours of uniform policing before being allowed to progress to being a detective, everyone else should have to as well.
The reality, though, was that there was an enormous shortage of detectives nationwide. The direct entry scheme was seen by those in charge as a solution to the crushing understaffing levels faced by investigation departments. And I can see where they are coming from. Detective work involves a different set of skills to uniform policing, and is a very different style of work. If youâre more interested in the blue lights runs and intermittent adrenaline rushes of the uniform branch, the notion of sitting at a desk for long hours filling out court files and so on might not appeal. So thereâs no guarantee that a uniformed officer will enjoy being a detective â or have the right skills for the job. That might have been part of the reason that investigation departments were struggling with internal recruitment and retention so much.
The divisiveness of the scheme didnât bother me. I wanted to be a detective,and this was a way to do it â and do it faster than if I joined the police as a uniformed officer.
My previous applications had given me a better idea of what the interviewers would be looking for this time around. In the name of fairness, the application process is full of tickboxes and bureaucracy; I now had a better idea of which boxes to tick and how to provide answers in the right format. The STAR method of answering questions was second nature to me by now. STAR stands for âSituation, Task, Action, Resultâ, and is a way to structure an answer to any behavioural question (âgive an example of a time you did X.â) Armed with this and my previous experience of the process, I passed the Thames Valley Assessment Centre with flying colours and was accepted on to their Direct Entry Detective Training scheme, after which I would be stationed in Slough as part of Thames Valley Police (TVP).
I remember my first day quite well. I drove through the picturesque rural setting of the Thames Valley Police Training Centre in Sulhamstead, and parked up thinking to myself âthis is it. My first day as a police officer.â
I met my fellow recruits, who I would spend the next 19 weeks with doing my basic training. There were just under 20 of us on the course, most in their late 20s to early 30s â though there were a couple of older women on the course as well. I was pleased to see that we were pretty evenly split, gender-wise. And, of course, we were all nervous, excited, and keen to make a great impression on our trainers and each other. Weâd all picked our smartest outfits for that first day.
As the day got underway, we were ushered into a large hall in the mainbuilding, where we received talks from high-ranking officers who told us about Thames Valley Police and the history of UK policing. They also frequently expressed how special we were as detective recruits and how much they believed in this relatively new scheme. Their goal, I think, was to get us as enthused and excited as possible about the career weâd chosen. It definitely worked on me.
The following day we got back into formal wear, ready for our attestation ceremony, where we would be officially inaugurated as police officers. We all lined up in the main hall of the training centre and started practicing the lines of the Attestation oath, led by our main trainer Jessica. She was pacing up and down in front of us, making sure we were all in the right position and speaking at the right volume.
âTake your lanyards off,â she said to us, âyou look tidier without them.â I remember thinking that she had the definite air of a schoolteacher. Later, I realised that many of the recruits who go through Sulhamstead were between 18 and 20 years old, so the schoolteacher attitude made more sense.
Practice completed, the Magistrate and other officials came in and we went through the oaths line by line:
I (name) ...of (station and county)... do solemnly and sincerely declare and
affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable,
with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental
human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to
the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all
offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the
said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties
thereof faithfully according to law.
It felt momentous and special, but also surreal taking an oath to serve the monarch. Afterwards we each went up to the front to receive our certificates from one of the magistrates, and were congratulated, and that was it â we were officially police officers.
Suddenly, I had all the powers of a constable. I could arrest people, or stop and search them. Or both, I suppose. Even though I had the badge to prove it, I confess that I didnât feel like a police officer. On reflection, that was hardly surprising. I hadnât done any training yet. But I remember feeling the excitement, anticipation and pride of what was to come. It was thrilling.
We received our uniforms after our attestation ceremony, and putting it on for the first time, in my small bedroom at the training centre, felt great. Even though I had absolutely no idea how to wear everything properly, or how to set up the kit belt. To my surprise, nobody explained how to wear the uniform properly â and this became one of the first hot topics of the WhatsApp group chat for our cohort. Pictures were flying back and forth that day as we all posed in our uniforms, puzzled out the kit belt, and showed off proud pictures in uniform with family and friends. It felt like a great beginning of this new chapter of our lives; it felt like becoming part of the police family.
Cop shows and the true crime stories glorify the role of police officers, but what is it really like, particularly between those rare drama-filled moments? In Living the Dream, Jade Cameron reflects on her two years as a trainee detective, giving us the highlights of her training and service through the cycle of various detective units with the Thames Valley police in the UK. Compelled to serve by a strong desire to help people, she enrolls in the Detective Constable Degree Holder Entry Program, skipping the usual years of service as a uniformed officer to instead become a Trainee Detective. Cameron shares many details of her experience at âSullyâ (the Thames Valley Police training center, nicknamed after the village in which its located). The camaraderie of her training cohort carries her through this initial phase of her education, and she expects similar fellowship and support from her coworkers once she transfers out to the police department, while they save the world.
Cameronâs language is smooth as can be, and this was a relatively easy read. She wrote this memoir as though she was sitting beside us, sharing her story comfortably in conversation. While the book is full of acronyms, she masterfully balanced description and shorthand so that the reader can follow along. As an American only mildly familiar with the British police structure, I was able to understand her locations and duties quite well.
She also gives us a fairly deep dive into the day-to-day reality of a British detective â not just of the more concrete details (such as the bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork), but the seemingly universal toll it takes on the psyche of those that serve. While she focuses on her own experiences, she alludes to the burnout her colleagues seem to also be experiencing.
While Cameron was full of hope when first in Sully, that hope dies as the story wears on. Unfortunately, from the beginning she notes that her hope would erode, and the story would have been much more powerful if she hadnât revealed this quite so early in the book.
This is a story that needs to be told. First responders everywhere suffer with higher rates of burnout, PTSD, and even suicide than the population at large, and Living the Dream shows us some of the ways the system itself contributes to these problems. While Cameron doesnât propose any firm solutions, she demonstrates the brokenness experienced by many police officers.