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Professional Development

Teaching at Gimborn, a first timer’s experience Martin Turner , 9 Region In my short time with the IPA I have tried to make the most of it, so headed off to Germany at the end of March 2018 to visit a colleague I met at Gimborn in late 2017. I was lucky enough to visit the regional Police School and the local Police HQ. This consisted of an amazing lunch at the training school’s canteen, a tour of the grounds, driver training centre, shooting ranges and, the highlight, Police dog puppy rearing centre. T he tour to the Police HQ included visits to custody , CID, uniform, vehicles and so on. It always amazes me the vast amount of similarities with policing all over the world, but also the massive

differences in some processes, procedure and equipment. The question of armed policing / Taser use always comes up. A delightful evening in a local Brauhaus with Beer and German delicacies followed of course! The next day I made my way to the IPA Conference Venue at Gimborn Castle via train and pick up in a brand new minibus. Here I met Kyle Hardcastle, another Section UK member from the Met Police. Together we headed to the castle, Kyle to prepare his presentation and I to enjoy lunch in the Schloss Hotel next door. After lunch Kyle presented to the mostly Scandinavian students on the ‘Understanding Terrorism’ seminar, while I watched and took note of things I would remove from my own presentation to avoid duplication. Kyle’s input was very interesting and the students seemed to take it all on board. That evening it was time to enjoy the Turmbar (Tower Bar) and share some delicacies from Norway and Denmark. New friends were made, old friends reacquainted and many a patch/email addresses exchanged. On the Friday morning I had probably the toughest slot of the week on a Gimborn seminar. Some students didn’t make the 9am start and many others were rather bleary eyed and sore headed! I gave my presentation

to the class and answered some questions as best I could. It was a novel experience taking a class at Gimborn and not sitting in the audience. It was all too soon time to return to the UK, laden with various ‘goodies’ from Scandinavia and with many new contacts in countries such as Pakistan, Malta, Greece, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and Australia. This is what being an IPA member is all about and I can’t recommend it enough!

POLICE WORLD Vol 63 No. 3, 2018

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