Uniformed Hero nominee – Chief Inspector John Cole

Uniformed Hero nominee – Chief Inspector John Cole

Chief Inspector John Cole has served the communities of Staffordshire for 30 years. Throughout his career he has always displayed the highest levels of integrity and selflessness, putting the rights of victims and communities first.

He has worked across the full breadth of duties with Staffordshire Police, including as a Force Duty Officer.

Most recently, John has been providing essential support to newly promoted colleagues, generously sharing his knowledge and experience.

John is known for his empathetic support for others, including those who work for and with him. Given the tough nature of policing, he has dedicated significant time to supporting others with advice, mentorship and friendship, intuitively recognising when someone might be struggling and require a supportive shoulder. Rather than turning away John holds out a hand illustrating his compassion for others irrespective of friendship.

John has helped his colleagues through the creation of training packages to support others to develop the skills required to deliver an excellent service.

In his last year of service,he has worked tirelessly to develop and deliver a ‘command and control’ training package, which is now attracting national interest. The package aims to support senior officers to develop their knowledge and skills in this critical area of policing. The quality of the package is such that policing national body, the College of Policing, has highlighted it as good practice and is considering using it as a basis for a national programme.

One of John’s most significant achievements has been his work bonding blue light services more closely together. He was the senior officer responsible for the Hanley co-location of police and fire services, focusing on how co-location could improve services for victims. Bringing services together can often be challenging, but his emotional intelligence, affability and enthusiasm has led to the development of a new, collaborative culture across police and fire services in Hanley, with real benefits for victims.

As John heads towards the end of his service as a police officer he continues to support the force selflessly. Working tirelessly to ensure his colleagues are supported given the unprecedented volume of calls the force now faces. John has an ability to recognise the importance of any function and how that affects the wider organisations. He also recognises consequences of actions and the need to understand the impact balanced against the success of the action.

John continues to volunteer to perform public order and firearms command roles, once again putting himself in a position of making critical decisions to protect the public.

Both of these roles come with a personal sacrifice as often rest days are cancelled and a requirement for an ‘on-call’ function is required. John has spent 30 years being that reliable person who will always be that volunteer to support, changing duties to ensure cover and working around core duties to provide resilience. Even in his last few months John has made personal sacrifice and cancelled annual leave to ensure the resilience in critical roles, allowing colleagues to take important leave.

Now John has been nominated as a Uniformed Hero in the Your Heroes Awards by senior officers at Staffordshire Police.

A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said: “John has served Policing with devotion for 30 years. He has taken every opportunity to do the right thing, even if it has resulted in personal detriment. Many call him a friend, a person well known and respected across our organisation and with partners.”