Federation shows support for matchday officers on cancelled rest days

14 August 2023

West Midlands Police Federation showed its support for officers who had their rest days cancelled on Saturday (12 August) due to a large number of football matches in the Force area.

Deputy chair Jason Dooley, whose remit includes officers’ welfare, mental health and wellbeing, took the Federation’s welfare van on a tour of the West Midlands to hand out sweets, stress relief balls and other freebies.

“I think it was well received,” he said.

There were four Football League fixtures in the Force area on Saturday with Coventry City playing Middlesborough in a lunch-time game before Birmingham City took on Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion faced Swansea City and Walsall hosted Stockport County.

Jase said: “We don’t normally have that many games on the same day in the West Midlands. It was unprecedented.

“They cancelled all police officers’ rest days, which is unusual, filled the games out with the public order officers and the officers who are trained for this, and once they’d filled all those they reinstated the rest days for the rest of the Force.

“The Federation doesn’t normally work weekends, unless we are on call, but I wanted to show our support for the officers.

“We got some freebies, stress relief balls, pin badges, and loads of sweets to show we’re with them.”

Branch deputy chair Jase Dooley

Jase’s day kicked off at the Coventry Building Society Arena, where he also met some of the Thames Valley Police mounted section.

“It was the first time we’ve had horses policing in the West Midlands for years,” he said.

“The Force is trialling it again and it was really good to see.

“I’m hoping they come back. It’d be great if they did. One horse does the job of at least one hundred police officers.

“We gave the Thames Valley team some stuff as well, and that went down really well.”

Jase was able to be back in Birmingham for the midday briefings and then visited the control suite, the operational support unit and the Hawthorns to see the teams policing West Brom’s first home game of the season.

“I wanted to make sure that we were out there showing our support for our members,” he said.