Frontline life-saving Portsmouth police officer named in News Year Honours
and live on Freeview channel 276
The 43-year-old Portsmouth PC has already been praised for saving a man’s life after talking him down from a balcony for more than two hours before back up arrived.
The News has chosen to honour the 999 response cop for his actions, compassion – and humility in saying any of his colleagues would have done the same.
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Hide AdPC Masood told The News it was ‘absolutely amazing’ to be included.
‘When we do our job we don’t expect anything in return,’ he said.
‘It was absolutely a privilege to receive that award and when I was featured in the newspaper quite a lot of people recognise me now in the city.
‘Sometimes when I pick my kids up from school and a couple of mums pulled me aside and said “are you the same officer?”
‘It’s a really good positive experience.
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Hide Ad‘To highlight something like that people get to know what we do on a day to day basis, and consider us as human beings, as just normal people doing exceptional jobs.
‘I’m not different from anyone else there at the time and in that role.’
As reported, PC Masood said his mind was working at 100mph when he responded to an alleged assault in Fratton.
He raced up to the eighth storey of a block of flats to find the suspect – who then barricaded himself in a balcony, slashed himself with a broken bottle and threatened to jump.
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Hide AdPC Masood spent 150 minutes talking him down before the force negotiator arrived to defuse the incident further.
He added: ‘My incident was one of the incidents that got highlighted but on a day to day basis there’s not a shift where there’s not someone like that.’
He said the number of high-risk people in mental health crisis has increased.
PC Masood added his thanks to everyone who supports him and the police and urged everyone to ‘just look after each other’.