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Police CPI raise over £2500 for appointed charity of the year – Care of Police Survivors (COPS)

Returning for the first time since 2020, Secured by Design’s national training conference and exhibition ATLAS was noted as a huge success with police-owned organisation Police Crime Prevention Initiatives (Police CPI), raising an impressive £2565 for their appointed charity of the year, Care of Police Survivors (COPS).

SBD is the flagship of a range of crime prevention ventures carried out by Police CPI. Their renowned annual ATLAS event saw over 200 Designing out Crime Officers (DOCOs) from across the UK join senior police officers and a range of guest speakers to attend workshops, and network with over 50 SBD member companies exhibiting hundreds of security related products.

Care of Police Survivors (COPS) is a peer support charity that provides the families of police officers and staff who have lost their lives whilst on duty with the fundamental and lifelong support needed to continue and rebuild their lives after the death of a beloved officer.

For the last 20 years since its foundation in 2003, COPS have been dedicated to fulfilling their mission to rebuild the shattered lives by connecting bereaved families with others who truly understand, by virtue of having been in the same situation themselves.

In an interview with Police CPI, Chief Executive Officer of COPS, Tim Buckley commented: “ATLAS has been fantastic, we couldn’t be more thankful to the likes of yourselves for picking us as your charity of the year because that all helps to increase awareness and allow more people to understand what we do and why we exist”.

Tim went on to say: “You can’t be a police officer today without the support of your family. We appreciate that policing is difficult and that every day, the men and women of the UK police forces go out and put themselves in danger, they don’t run away from it. So, when the worst happens, we will be here to pick up the pieces. Our tag line is rebuilding shattered lives and that is what we do every day”.

The work that COPS carry out predominantly focuses on offering unlimited and lifelong peer support through a range of dedicated weekends and events that take place across the year.

Some are aimed at bringing together survivors with a specific relationship to the officer, for example a spouse, partner or parent, whilst others are based on a particular theme of activity.

In addition to their survivor weekends, the charity arranges numerous local and national events to offer opportunities for survivors to build a strong support network.

Working with organisations such as Winston’s Wish and Red Arc, COPS also uniquely offers counselling support, whereby they allocate and pay for specialist counselling services on behalf of affected families.

Tim added: “Nobody does exactly what we do, there are other police charities that support the families of officers who have lost their life on duty, but we are the only ones that absolutely focus on that. The others tend to be financial support, what we do is provide the environment and opportunity to rebuild the emotional structure that is lost”.

COPS is almost entirely funded through donations from the policing community and public and receives no government support.

If you would like to support them and the remarkable work they carry out, there are a number of ways you can help:

“With their love and support, Care of Police Survivors has helped us to carry on and start putting our lives back together. We will never get over what has happened to us, but I am so, so glad I have become part of this wonderful family”.

Read more survivor stories here.