THE death of a much-respected colleague from COVID-19 is a stark reminder of how tough the pandemic has been on Essex Police Officers, their Federation said.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Marine Unit Special Constable Toby Speller sadly died after contracting the disease last month.<\/p>\n
Just last week The Met Police confirmed COVID-19 had killed five of their serving officers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s brought the devastating pandemic into sharp focus for Essex officers who recently lost two other colleagues in non-COVID-19 incidents.<\/p>\n
Their deaths which have been hard to take, said Laura Heggie Essex Police Federation Chair, and the loss is compounded because they haven\u2019t had the send-off and tribute, they all deserved because of social distancing regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last five weeks have been especially hard for everyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just the three serving officers that have died, it\u2019s also the number of retired officers who have passed away we\u2019re getting notified about.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily COVID-related but it just feels like death is all that is spoke about at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat colleagues are finding really hard is that colleagues who are passing away aren\u2019t getting the send-offs they should and deserve because the COVID restrictions around funerals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s also preventing the grieving process for so many people. It\u2019s the acknowledgement and that coming together we normally have after a colleague or friends funeral, we\u2019re not getting, which is really hard and impacts as all emotional and mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE death of a much-respected colleague from COVID-19 is a stark reminder of how tough the pandemic has been on Essex Police Officers, their Federation said. Essex Police Marine Unit\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":163094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163115,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160505\/revisions\/163115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/163094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}