While you were sleeping, our teams of officers were working nightshifts to keep you safe…

 

One of those teams is the Roads and Armed Policing Team, who work hard to keep the roads of County Durham and Darlington as safe as possible, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

Their 12-hour Saturday nightshift started off with an immediate seizure of this Mazda car.

 

When an officer asked the driver why he thought he’d been stopped, the driver casually explained it was maybe because he didn’t have a licence, insurance or MOT. And how right he was.

 

The car was immediately seized and the driver reported to court for the offences – we were nice though and gave him a lift home to save him a four-hour walk in the cold and dark.

 

Amongst the blue light runs of the night also included a two-vehicle road traffic collision in Wolsingham in which a VW Golf veered off the road, crashed into a dry-stone wall and then into a Mitsubishi travelling in the other direction.

 

The driver of the Golf was taken to hospital with miraculously minor injuries and both drivers passed the roadside tests for both drugs and alcohol. Enquiries into the cause are ongoing.

 

Another tactical stop included hunting down a car believed to be carrying a wanted man in the Easington area. The suspect car was stopped near the A19 at Castle Eden and checks made revealing the man had previously been detained.

 

But perhaps the most important incident of the night came just after midnight when we got a 999 call from a distraught couple reporting that their son was in significant distress in their car after suspecting he was under the influence of drugs.

 

Not knowing what to do, they pulled over on the A177 where the man continued to be in a state of Acute Behavioural Disorder (ABD), putting himself and his parents at risk on a busy, unlit road.

 

Units raced to the scene to safeguard the family and kept them calm during the anxious wait for paramedics. The man was then taken to hospital for specialist care.

 

These are just some of the incidents attended by one sergeant and their team in a single shift, travelling nearly 200 miles throughout the night to come to the aid of those most vulnerable on County Durham and Darlington’s roads.

 

They will continue to do this every night, of every week, of every year.