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The case of the policeman, the otter and a real-life hunt for rural villains
Mike Pannett was better known to his colleagues as Dirty Harry.
Arriving back in North Yorkshire, following a spell in the Metropolitan Police, Mike announced to fellow officers at Malton station that he was going to clean up the town. He still remembers the sniggers and the raised eyebrows and it wasn't long before he had to admit that riot duty in the capital hadn't quite prepared him for the very different demands of policing the rolling hills of Ryedale.
"It's a completely different type of policing," says Mike, remembering his first shifts back in 1997. "You still get drug dealers and you are still called to deal with assaults, but obviously it's on a much smaller scale and in London I never remember anyone walking a mile over open countryside to answer a call from a Guide group about a trapped otter. I grew up near York and when I moved back north I expected to find a saner environment. In many ways it was. Life is a lot more laid back, but you have to get used to the bizarre. During my time I had to investigate the theft of tractors, weather vanes, garden gnomes, stone troughs full of flowers and even sheep. I once apprehended a lad who had stolen a clutch of newly laid eggs from underneath a sitting hen. He told me he hadn't had any breakfast."
Becoming a qualified wildlife officer – a job he says no one else wanted – Mike was featured in the BBC's Country Cops series. It was then he began to realise the various cases he'd been involved in and the characters he'd met along the way might provide suitable material for a book.
Last year, after more than a decade patrolling his patch, Mike published Now Then Lad, which was soon dubbed the "real life Heartbeat". With virtually no publicity, word of mouth turned the tales of patrolling deserted roads in the pitch black into a bestseller and the second instalment You're Coming With Me Lad follows on from where the last left off.
As well as anecdotes from the beat, the book is also something of a love letter to both his second wife who was a sergeant in the same force and North Yorkshire.
"I've changed all the names and some of the locations," he says. "However, apart from a little artistic licence, everything is pretty much how it happened. They say truth is stranger than fiction and when I began to jot down material for the book I realised it was the sort of stuff you just couldn't make up.
"One day we were called out to a robbery. Two youths had stolen the takings from a local pub. They'd managed to persuade a pensioner that they were the innocent party. Thinking he was being a good Samaritan, he told them to hop in the back of his car and the three of them drove off.
"When we finally tracked him down, he was having lunch with a lady friend and the two thieves were long gone."
The book can read like a memoir of some bygone age of policing. However, Mike, who has now left the force to concentrate on writing full-time, insists that while the stories of botched investigations and police brutality are the ones which inevitably hit the headlines, most of those who join the force are committed to the community they serve.
"It would be nice to think the books give an alternative, more positive image of the police," he says. "The force has had a lot of negative press recently, but I still believe that the vast majority of officers go into the profession for the right reasons and they do a fantastic job in often very difficult circumstances.
"Unfortunately, it only takes a couple of bad incidents for us all to be tarred with the same brush. It's true that a lot of forces are so stretched now that they don't have the resources to do the job properly. In North Yorkshire, the local bobby is still seen as very much a part of the community. It may take a few years to become accepted and to get to know everyone, but ultimately that's what the public wants."
While many of the anecdotes Mike relates are on the petty end of the crime scale, policing an area as vast as Ryedale was not without tension. Behind the chocolate box villages and traffic jams of tourists, poverty is rife and the disparate groups who
live and work there are often desperate to protect their
own interests.
"The countryside is under enormous pressure these days with all sorts of conflicting interests from farmers, foresters, conservationists, hunters, anglers and not forgetting the wildlife," he says. "I was well aware that the landowners and moorland keepers are very protective of the countryside and very concerned for their livelihoods. Any sight of outside interference and they would have understandably been ready to close ranks. You have to tread very carefully.
"There was one day when a group of Guides spotted an otter which had become caught in a mink trap. By law, those who set the cages are supposed to check them at least every 24 hours to ensure they are not endangering other animals. It's obviously very serious, but there was no point wading in and threatening people with court action.
"Instead, we got all those involved together and pointed out their responsibilities. The lad who had set that particular trap felt dreadful. It had just been an oversight and it was a far better way to deal with the situation.
"The way I see it, rural policing is about working together towards the same outcome. The more people you can work with, the more allies you'll have when things inevitably get tough.
"When the hunting ban came in, a lot of rural police officers around the country were in danger of being caught in the crossfire. I was lucky in that I had friends on both sides of the divide which made my job a lot easier than it might have been."
However, there are some incidents which Mike could never have prepared for. One day he answered a call from a farmer's wife who feared her husband had committed suicide. He had and, after discovering the body, Mike had to confirm the woman's worst fears.
"As soon as you put your uniform on for the first time you accept that there will be days like that, days when you feel you've woken up in the middle of a horror movie," he says. "When you have to deal with events like that, the uniform acts as a type of body armour. You're not you any longer. You're a policeman – on duty, coping; dealing with it."
For all those dark days, Mike has never regretted joining the force or leaving the Met. He learnt many valuable lessons during his years as an officer and while he may no longer patrol his much-loved rural beat, he still looks back fondly at the many characters he met along the way.
"The Met was a great training ground, but a point came where I thought my life was flashing before me. It was stressful, I knew I had to move and North Yorkshire was always where my heart was."
The Yorkshire Post has secured a limited supply of signed copies of Mike Pannett's new book, You're Coming With Me Lad, available only for Yorkshire Post readers. To purchase your copy for 12.99, plus 2.75 P&P, please call the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 015 3232.
You're Coming With Me Lad will be officially launched at Waterstone's in York on Thursday. Part of the proceeds from the book will go towards the Bridge and Wheels Appeal which is looking to raise 1m to replace a bridge and restore a heritage steam engine on the North York Moors Railway.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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