There he is, the number plate etched in my mind, and it’s on a white BMW 5 series, 11.30 at night but it’s still too late for me to blend away and spring a trap later on. He’s off up the road, and I’m after him.

This is when my mind is six to the dozen, as it stands now, at the moment, I am in his hands. He’s wanted for a £53K burglary, the cars stolen and on false plates, and he’s failed to appear for a court case in Liverpool, but I have him in front of me in Exeter, Devon, and it’s flying down Topsham Road, out of town. What he does next, will have a direct impact on my life and career.

“FAIL TO STOP, SGT HARRY TANGYE AS PURSUIT COMMANDER…” I drone out, as if an airline pilot reporting the weather for a holiday zone. It shows control room staff I am under control and not seeing ‘red mist’. The BMW is offside, popping a couple of overtakes, all good for now as it’s a relatively straight road, moderately safe, apart from the 60 mph in the 30mph limit.

“I AM AN ADVANCED DRIVER IN A PURSUIT CAPABLE VEHICLE, ROAD CONDITIONS GOOD, AND TRAFFIC MEDIUM. CAN I HAVE HELICOPTER AND DOGS INFORMED WITH ARV TRAFFIC BACK UP PLEASE?”

The BMW approaches a congested roundabout, manoeuvres through the stationary traffic, then planting the accelerator of his car screaming across the kerb, he’s straight through a red light and out on the other side. I approach at equal speed, but I’m scanning all over with my eyes for dangers, feet between parked cars, down through pavements, I’m looking 100m ahead of the BMW and back to the front of my bonnet constantly, I’m slowing down for the red light and crawling through where he drove through without care of life, but then my powerful BMW X5 drags me up to my quarry again, his lights getting bigger as I win the drag race. I’m driving for both of us. I’m constantly thinking, ‘When am I aborting? Okay for now, hang on, aborting now, no hang on, okay again’.

The BMW’s rear end lights up with a stream of red brake lights and slews to the right, the off side bodywork glinting with the street lights as the driver drags the front end into the entrance of a side road, and he’s gone from my view.

“TEMPORARY LOSS” I say, and as I follow through the junction I see all is clear and stamp on my accelerator, and I see it again. “I’M WITH IT AGAIN, I AM TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION THE SAFETY OF THE PUBLIC, THE SUBJECT AND MYSELF, AND ENSURING I CONFORM TO ARTICLES 2 AND 8 OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT”

Yes, I blurt this stuff out, but it means something. It means, I am qualified to undertake this pursuit and I am not seeing red mist. It’s what we are taught as I know that if that driver loses it now and kills someone, as it stands now, I have a very good chance of finding myself facing a death by dangerous charge. No it probably won’t get through court, as the great british jury usually sees the sense and the injustice of it all, but I will worry for not only my job, but my family, my freedom, I will be waiting for often around 3 years to see my fate come to conclusion, I will be off front line, my life will be stagnant. I will just have to wait reading the headlines of ‘Police Officer Charged for Dangerous Driving.’ This sounds ridiculous, but I am praying the driver in front of me now, keeps me out of jail.

I make good ground on him as he’s put off by the terrain and the corners which still offer a clear view for me. I have trained for years for this moment. I have my Police advanced driving, I have my Tactical Pursuit and Containment (TPAC) , and my VIP driver qualifications. We train on runways, we practice on roads and we train hard. We know what a car will do if you slam it’s brakes on at over 100 miles an hour whilst pulling its steering wheel from one lane to another, which means we can think ahead at what we are going to do next in that moment when others may lose control. But in court, if this man loses it and I haven’t called it off which would be the sensible thing to do right now for my own preservation, then none, absolutely none of my qualifications, training or experience can be taken into consideration by a court.

My driving is compared to my mother driving the car and whether that would be considered below that of a careful and competent driver, and that is why CPS regularly summons police officers for doing their job, in exactly the way they have been trained to do. That, is simply unjust. It screams so unjust, but with a family of an offender searching to blame someone other than their criminal son, unfortunately the CPS sometimes summons that officer to court. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, with the law as it is, often feel they have to pass a file for prosecution to the CPS. The stress and pressure for the officers concerned, their careers often in tatters, takes it’s toll, and the officers can suffer from PTSD, not from the incident, but from the investigation and the time it takes.

The BMW turns a sharp left, and I know it’s a cul de sac, I relay it on the radio and I’m ready to de camp. The pavements are clear but I slow down slightly to await its next move. It’s next move was what I was dreading… it lost control, glancing off a Morris Minor of all cars, then into a the rear of a car parked on a driveway, pushing it into the front of the house cracking the brick work and smashing the window, it then continued across another garden and came to rest having written off yet another parked car.

He’s out, I’m out and we are running through the night, up onto a neighbours shed and as I do the same, I see one of his feet has gone through, and mine follows, it’s too fragile, and I grab at the structure of the shed to stop myself plummeting through. I am determined, I am not going to let this one go now. Down into the garden behind and across, and up over the garden fence into the gloom of the park behind. I’m after him still and shouting on my radio, my body armour taking it’s toll on my lungs. It’s a question of who wants it more, me to to catch him, or him to get away.

I now use something in my arsenal that has never let me down. I hope that any criminal doesn’t read this as I will be letting the cat out of the bag. When we are both running through the park, I am now thinking that I am going to have to stop. I have nothing left. I am running on empty. So I take a deep breath as I continue running and shout, very calmly and in a composed manner, “I’M CATCHING YOU”. If said in a relaxed almost gaulish way, it is only a matter of seconds before the assailant throws their hands up in desperation, thinking you have a spare tank of oxygen he doesn’t know about. I am 48 years old, and have never lost a foot chase in 27 years!

He falls to the ground gasping, “OKAY, OKAY”. I have a red dot of a taser on him, and arrest him through my deep breathing, and then try to figure out where the hell I am for my colleagues to find me.

I return to the scene of devastation, and I am then told there was a woman in the passenger seat, and a baby in a car seat on the back. I had caught this man who had committed all these offences, and if wasn’t caught, would continue to do so, making many more victims along the way, but he was stopped now. He was going to jail and fortunately for me, the other occupants were unhurt.

Picture this however. He crashed, and the mother and baby had been killed. I am now facing the likelihood of going to jail, as well as asking myself everyday, what I could have done differently. The question of pursuits is for the public to answer. They need to decide whether they should ban all pursuits and put up with the much higher crime rate with criminals knowing they are safe once in a car or on a motorbike, or whether they should pressurise the government into protecting police officers from becoming scapegoats when they do pursue. The same goes for attending 999 calls. We don’t want a licence to drive recklessly. We simply want to have our driving skills, qualifications and experience, at least taken into consideration in any inquiry, and if very quickly, it is found the officer drove as they were trained, then that should be then end of the matter. End of.

Please ask your local MP to support the Shadow Policing Minister Louise Haigh and the police Federation in getting the legislation changed. Lets protect the protectors.

This is a true account of a pursuit earlier this year involving myself.

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