TV's first traffic cop on a 30 year career of career criminals and Royal passengers in South Yorkshire

After a 30 year career, PC Tim Scothern is retiring from South Yorkshire Police and a job that has seen him brush shoulders with career criminals and royalty.

Inspired to join by his older brother Martin, already a serving traffic officer, he started in 1992 at Dinnington, had a deployment to traffic in 1996 and never left.

He said: “I had no plan to go into policing. I had a job in industry, when I got made redundant Martin said ‘you should join the police’.

“I was on attachment to traffic and did a big high profile pursuit. My colleague got run over deploying the stinger. It was the first time anybody had got hit and we caught the offender. “The Chief Superintendent called me in and said ‘Scothern, sit down and tell me about that job’. After two or three minutes he said ‘right then, you are staying on traffic’ - and that was my application.”

He has since covered hundreds of miles of roads across Barnsley, Rotherham, Sheffield and Doncaster causing self-confessed chaos.

Criminals - whether they are car theives, burglars or sex predators - need to get around and, he says, are at their most vulnerable when they are on the road because they have nowhere to hide.

He said: “I was never one for being behind a desk, they had to handcuff me to it to do paperwork. If I did not catch the offender I was like a bear with a sore head. I couldn’t believe they had gotten away to go on to commit further crime. I had to catch them.”

Twelve years of television appearances, starting in 2002 on BBC 1 with Traffic Cops, also came by chance.

South Yorkshire Police was one of the first forces in the country to have cameras fitted inside police cars and it featured on the BBC current affairs show ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’. A television producer happened to be watching at home and thought filming officers at work would make for a good television show.

It showed the public a human side to policing and the situations faced every day, and, that there is a reason for enforcing simple speeding and seatbelt offences.

PC Scothern recalls: “I have enjoyed this job immensely and that is why I stayed a PC for 30 years, but it is incredible the mark that we have managed to leave and we raised awareness of roads policing through these programmes. We brought it into the living room so people could understand what we were doing when we stop people for speeding or no seatbelts.

“I have held dead children, I have resuscitated children. I hope we humanised traffic cops and what we deal with daily.”

In 30 years there are three incidents he still thinks about every day.

On New Year’s Day in 1998 the car behind him, with a grandfather and grandson inside, crashed on the A57. They died at the scene and PC Scothern had to break the news to a woman that her father and her son were dead.

He gave first aid to fellow traffic officer and police motorcyclist PC Matt Lannie who was pursuing a car in April 2020 that failed to stop for police. He was in collision with another car and died shortly after the crash.

PC Scothern was also called upon to attend the Great Heck train crash near Selby in February 2001 when a train collided with a vehicle which had crashed down a motorway embankment onto the track causing it to derail into the path of a freight train.

“There have been some atrocious incidents and they still play on my mind, I think about those three every day.”

However, the job has brought lighter moments and one in particular while he was working as a royal protection driver.

“I had to pick up Princess Anne from Doncaster race-course and she got in the back with her boots on. She put her foot on my shoulder, unzipped her boot saying ‘my man I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your shoulder’, took her boot off, put her foot back on my shoulder and her lady in waiting got another pair of shoes out, she put them on and said ‘thank you my man, that was very kind.”

In retirement, PC Scothern will work in the motorsport industry doing promotional track driving for car manufacturers and supercar experiences.