Stories from the front line

As a front line police officer, I attended thousands of incidents over the years, and met many people in all sorts of situations. Sometimes there was drama - death, injury, violence, confrontation. But not always, sometimes situations weren't as they first seemed, or people surprised me. There were quite a few funny situations too. People are endlessly amusing!

I started writing down some of these more memorable stories, although I'm not sure why. I did for a while have a blog called Northerly Direction, although nobody ever read it, and it isn't available any more. Maybe I thought I'd make my fortune writing a book. That never happened either.

Quick diversion - you may be wondering why it was called Northerly Direction. Well, it's a wry comment on the weird way that cops sometimes speak, especially when giving evidence in court. Things like, "I exited my vehicle" (I got out of my car), or "I proceeded along the path" (I walked up the path), or "I observed the male subject fleeing the scene" (I saw the man run away). You get the idea.

I've never actually heard a police officer say, "I was proceeding in a northerly direction" but I'd bet someone somewhere once said it (or a script writer wrote it!)

Anyway, back to the point. I still have those collected blog entries, there aren't many, and they're short and sweet. But I've decided to publish them here instead in a short series. The first one will follow this post, the others over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

I'm always happy to work with script writers or authors looking for unusual incidents to include in their narrative - do get in touch if I can help!