3rd Sidcup Guides visit the Met Police at New Scotland Yard

Neyda & Olivia, aged 10

"On 9 March 2019, 3rd Sidcup Guides were invited to New Scotland Yard in London as part of the launch of Girlguiding LaSER's partnership with the Metropolitan Police Service. We met at Sidcup station full of excitement! We got on the train to go to London, and along the way we took a lot of photos. At 9am we were standing outside New Scotland Yard at last. Before we got inside we had to go through a metal detector. We were met by our chaperone and taken to a room to meet some other Guides and police officers.

In the morning session, we watched some CCTV about a man who broke into a house. We wrote down his appearance and what he was doing. We also saw what the criminal had dropped, and saw that his blood was left on the door and window. We interviewed the victim and learnt what had been stolen. We also spoke to a witness to find out what he had seen. We also had to interview three suspects. The first one didn’t give us that much information about what he was doing at the time but he did have a watch matching the description of one of the stolen items. The second suspect was a lady and she gave us more clear information on what she was doing at the time, and she did have a new black iPhone 8 matching the description of one of the stolen items. The third suspect was acting suspiciously so I thought it would be her. Later, we found out the criminal was suspect one; he had an iPhone and a watch which matched the description of one of the stolen items.”

Madison & Cailtin, aged 12

“Lunch time was really cool! My favourite part was when we met the female firearm officers. They told us a lot of information and that they were only 3 out of 100 women in the firearm section of the police, which is only 2% of the total number of firearm officers. They inspired me to look into becoming a police cadet. We were also able to meet some police dogs. One was called Tom and the other was called Gemma. They were very friendly. We then tried our hands at forensics and we were able to take pictures. The ‘uniform’ for forensics included hair nets, shoe covers and masks that went over your mouth and overalls to cover your clothes. We had an amazing time and I really enjoyed the whole day.”

Bethan & Drew, aged 10

“After lunch, in partners we had our fingerprints taken. We dipped our fingers in black ink and placed them onto pieces of white paper. We then we learnt how to do stop and search. One of us hid something in our clothes, shoes or socks and the other one had to find it. This involved us using the back of our hand to pat them down firmly and searching their shoes and socks very carefully.

Our leader managed to arrange for four of us to make our Promise that day! We did this in the afternoon standing in front of everyone in the room and standing next to 3 armed female police (with guns!!!) and the Assistant Commissioner of the Met. We were all a bit scared and nervous but our leader said we did a fantastic job!”