Country policeman: life on a rural beat

Mike Pannett woke up one day and realised that, after 10 years in the Metropolitan Police, the rivers of his native Yorkshire were calling — he hadn’t been fly-fishing for a decade.

On his patch: policeman Mike Pannett covered 600 square miles of North Yorkshire moorlands Photo: PAUL LEWIS

So in 1997 he swapped his south London patch for the North Yorkshire Moors. Whereas once he had been patrolling inner-city estates, working on the murder squad and the TSG (the riot police), now he was chasing poachers and nicking opportunistic burglars. Oh, and drinking endless cups of tea in farmhouse kitchens. But little did he realise how the skills of the local police can be tested, as the Raoul Moat case highlighted.

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