It’s all in a day’s work for the police. But the awards that some of them received for their quick-thinking action last year highlights their vital work in aid of the community. Claudia Calleja recounts some of their stories.

It was 4am when officers on duty at the Paola police station received a frantic call from a doctor.

He was standing outside an apartment block where, behind locked doors, a woman was trying to take her own life.

She had called her work colleagues to tell them she had just swallowed pills and alcohol.

Sergeant Conrad Ellul was on duty that day – July 18, 2020 – when the doctor placed the call asking for urgent assistance to get into the apartment.

Heading straight there with another police officer, Ellul rang the woman’s doorbell – getting no response – and then the buzzers of all the other apartments until someone opened the front door to the block.

Rushing upstairs to the penthouse where the woman lived, Ellul tried to kick the door down to no avail.

“Then, someone got me a chisel and hammer and I managed to get the door open,” Ellul recalls.

“Inside, we walked past a large dog and there was a bed,  next to which a woman was lying unconscious on the ground with pills and a bottle of alcohol beside her.”

The officers put the woman in the recovery position until the ambulance arrived.
Later, Ellul learned that the woman had asked for honours to be bestowed on the two police officers for helping save her life.

PS Ellul was one of the 40 officers who, earlier this month, were awarded a certificate of merit in recognition of their work in 2020. He was not the only one whose timely intervention was a life-saver last year.

Constable Rebecca Grech, 27, was on duty at a wedding in Żurrieq on August 21 when she noticed that several people had gathered around a woman who was acting abnormally. They were trying to help her but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

“I saw the woman fall to her knees. She was choking,” Grech recalls.

“I ordered the man who was holding her to lift her up and I started administering first aid.”

Her action was successful.

Grech noted she only acted instinctively and was never expecting to receive an award. Still, it motivated her to know that her timely action had been appreciated, she said.

Constable Andrew Caruana, 26, feels the same way.

The Mtarfa community officer was on his daily patrol on October 18 when he heard a commotion in a nearby residence. So he rang the doorbell.

“A woman opened in despair. I rushed up to the second floor and found a two-year-old who was choking. She couldn’t breathe and her mother was trying in vain to remove food from her mouth.

“I immediately bent the child over and started tapping on her back while keeping her head at a proper angle. After some attempts, she spat out the food that was blocking her airway and she started to breathe again.”

One police officer commended for going beyond the call of duty was Sergeant Mark Cremona, 34.

It was April 17 when a man went up to him and told him he had just left jail and had no place to go.

“After several, persistent calls we managed to get government entities on board. The government paid for a room for him to sleep for a short period of time,” the sergeant said.

The effort, he said, was made with the support of various other police entities.
He also pointed out that community policing was having a positive impact by bringing policing officers closer to the people.

In fact, several officers received an award for working around the clock during the pandemic.

One of them was Sergeant Edward Xuereb, 27, from the environment protection unit, whose work involved enforcing mandatory quarantine, performing spot checks and investigating reports about breaches of the various regulations that came into force to control the spread of the coronavirus.

Financial crimes inspector Keith Vella, 32, received the Policeman of the Year Award for the commitment, integrity and initiative he showed in the investigations he was responsible for as well as for his “impeccable” work in the anti-money laundering squad.

“The job of a member of the police force is never easy... there are no words to describe the sense of fulfilment this career gives,” Vella told Times of Malta.

“It is not a normal job and it is not an easy one. The simplest things, like listening and understanding the victims, and the sense of gratitude relayed back by the victims fill you and motivates you to carry on in pursuit of your goals,” the police inspector said.