22 Years as a Thames Valley Police Special Constable

When David first put on the uniform in 1972 he was a farmer in his early thirties, more familiar with livestock than legislation. His family farmed a patch of land for generations – a stretch between Buckingham and Milton Keynes – but the area had begun to face an unsettling rise in break ins. A local police officer named Jim often stopped by David’s family home for a cup of tea with his mother, herself the daughter of a Metropolitan Police sergeant. One day, Jim suggested David might consider becoming a Special Constable. It was a small conversation that reshaped the next two decades of his life.

“For someone from a farming background, it was a wonderful education,” David reflects. “I was used to working on my own, with nobody telling me what to do. Suddenly I had to learn the law, go to night school, and be prepared to help wherever I was needed.”

He embraced it wholeheartedly. After training on Monday nights at Aylesbury, which David describes as “like going back to school,” he began patrolling the rural beat, later transferring to Buckingham and becoming a familiar, trusted face across the villages.

David remembers walking into the police station for the first time, nervous and unsure where to go – “I followed an inspector, thinking he’d take me to the briefing room – and he went straight into the toilet,” he laughs.

His very first job was a domestic dispute in the village of Stone near Aylesbury. He stood quietly for two hours while a separating couple sorted through their belongings. They barely said a word to each other, and certainly not to him.

“Very uneventful,” David admits. But the seed was sown – policing wasn’t always about drama, but about presence. Being there at the right moment could make all the difference.

Rural policing in the 1970s and 80s wasn’t glamorous. “Half the police phones didn’t work,” David remembers. “I used to go out with nothing, no radio, no phone, except that they knew I was out.”

Despite a lack of tracking that would be unthinkable now, the work was just as important to our communities. David spent many long nights helping to hunt for a local arsonist who had been setting fire to farm buildings across the area. “He caused chaos. Farm buildings all over the place were going up,” David recalls. “The one good thing was, he never set fire to buildings with livestock. Looking back, that was interesting. Whoever he was had some conscience.”

Patrolling the pitch black lanes after a day’s work on the farm was exhausting, but David never questioned it. He was volunteering his time to help protect the community he’d grown up in.
“When people were going on holiday, they’d come into the station and tell us. We’d check their house every night, at different times. It meant we were out in all the villages, looking after people’s homes. That doesn’t happen now.”

David’s relationship with regular officers defined his time as a Special. He didn’t think of himself as anything other than support, but his dedication and reliability quickly earned him their respect. One sergeant in particular, Mr Woolley, took David under his wing, affectionately calling him “my boy.”

“If he needed something doing, he’d ring me and say, ‘When can you come?’ And I would go. That trust meant everything.”

He also worked closely with PC John Grace, whose straightforward honesty left a mark on him. When they were called to a case involving a child at risk, Grace pulled him aside.

“He said, ‘It’s no good you coming in. I’ve got to deal with this. I don’t want you involved.’ That showed the respect and care he had. He protected me from something he knew would be hard.”

Over 22 years, David fit his duties as a Special Constable around full days of farm work, and rarely thought of himself as doing anything extraordinary.

“I enjoyed it. I got to know people I’d never have known otherwise. And I was there to help the regular officers. That was my job.”

His mother, whose family history was steeped in policing, was proud to see the tradition continue. And though David sometimes wonders what life might have been like had he joined the regular force full time, he speaks with deep affection about his years as a Special Constable: the teamwork, the trust, the community.

“If you want to do it, join,” he says. “Just realise you’ve got to put the time aside, and be prepared to learn. But it’s a wonderful education. It gives you something nothing else can.”

Many things in policing have changed. Technology, resources, and the way officers work, all look very different now. But the things that inspired David back in 1972; service; community; pride, remain the beating heart of volunteering.

His story shows that you don’t need a policing background to make a difference. Just a willingness to learn, to support others, and to stand up for your community.

Have you been inspired by reading David’s story, or are interested in volunteering your time as a Special Constable? Visit our careers website to learn more, and apply today.

History