Shall we join?

I'd been trying to find out how it was that a 59-year-old Nelson Bay woman, a grandmother as the Herald story last week points out, is in the second season of the fly-on-the-wall documentary Recruits. Marilyn Falappi had failed twice as a young woman to become a police recruit, once because the police force at that time was not accepting many women and the second time because, at 164 centimetres, she was too short. But in these enlightened times gender, height (or shortness) and age are not part of the equation.

Mrs Falappi passed the physical test and has passed all bar the law exams, which she is hoping to sit again, so she's well on the way to bringing her life's experience as a mother, grandmother and long-time surf lifeguard to the position of constable. She's having a break from the Police Academy now, because, she tells me, she found being in the spotlight of the Recruits cameras very stressful, and she hopes to be readmitted soon to the law course.

Her ambition, and her acceptance as a recruit, has set me thinking about the contribution older people could make as police constables. I mean, as police on the streets rather than as senior police officers in supervisory roles. As Mrs Falappi says, policing is not about putting people into the back of the police truck; rather, she says, it is about talking to people.

Is it too romantic a notion, men and women of senior years on the beat? Or would their life skills and experience bring to policing a quality I see as important as authority?