‘We feel discarded’, say injured ex-police officers in call for recognition

An ex-police officer who lost her childhood dream job after injury felt “discarded”, she has said in a renewed call for recognition.

Jane Notley said her employer thought of her as a “financial hazard”, after a car thief put a vehicle into reverse and hit her four times.

She spoke outside Parliament alongside other former emergency service crew who have been hurt at work.

They have called for an honours scheme to recognise police officers, firefighters, paramedics and other personnel who have had to leave their jobs as a result of injury.

Ms Notley told the PA news agency she became a constable in Manchester in 1979.

She was on duty when she was injured 10 years later.

“We’d been looking for a guy that’d been stealing cars,” Ms Notley said.

“I identified where he was. I pulled my police car up behind him, and he slammed the car into reverse and hit me, through the side of the car, he hit me four times.

“I was lucky enough to get somebody who was able to reconstruct my legs, rather than being in a wheelchair, which is what I was told I would be in.

“But from that moment onwards, I had to leave the force. I was told, basically, ‘you’re a financial, sort-of, hazard. ‘We can’t afford you any more. You know, we can get other people in that can do the job.'”

Ms Notley said she was kept off the front lines for several years, until she had to leave.

“I was just told I was leaving and that was that,” the campaigner said.

“I had obviously mobility issues.

“I suffered from severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and ended up in 2010 having a nervous breakdown, and now awaiting surgery on my spine.”

The 65-year-old added: “I was just absolutely devastated because that’s all I ever wanted to do – I never wanted to do anything else.

“My grandfather was a police officer in Devon. I wanted to be a police officer from the age of five – never anything else.

“It wasn’t a case of, you know, ‘oh, I might think about doing that’. That’s what I was going to do.”

Ms Notley is now a counsellor who helps people with stress-related illnesses and trauma.

She said to be honoured for her service would make her ordeal “almost worthwhile”, but without a system, “it’s almost as though we’re just discarded, we are forgotten”.

Sean Burridge, 49, was an officer in Surrey for 24 years.

He said he was “massively proud” of being in the force.

Mr Burridge was injured during a head-on car crash in 2015, when he was pursuing a suspect who made a dangerous manoeuvre. It left him with back and shoulder injuries, but he stayed in the police until 2022.

“I knew I was never going to be front line again, so I applied for ill health retirement, and was granted that, and finally retired in April 2024,” Mr Burridge said.

He got his long service medal, but had he not stayed on, he “would have no official recognition of his service”. Mr Burridge said he was “massively proud” of his service but felt he had “no choice” but to retire.

“I’m disappointed I had to retire because I won’t get the bar on my medal to show that I’ve done for 30 years, but I know that I have helped people and taken nasty people off the street,” he added.

Tom Morrison, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheadle, paid tribute to members of the 999 Injured and Forgotten Campaign, led by Tom Curry.

Mr Morrison tabled a Commons motion, warning that “existing honours are limited in scope and rarely conferred”, and calling for “a dedicated injury in service award to formally recognise and honour the extraordinary sacrifice of emergency service workers injured in the line of duty”.

He told PA that with a scheme, Mr Curry could “walk down a street with that medal, and people will know that he put his life on the line, and the bravery that he showed out there”.

Mr Morrison added: “We’re talking about over 16,000 former police officers that have had to retire because of their injuries, and currently, there is no recognition – there’s not even a pat on the back for them.

“This would just give them that sense of purpose and recognition within their communities.”