IT was an unusually quiet night in Tavistock last Saturday (January 20) for the local police — but they still dealt with a host of issues ranging from a highly vulnerable missing person from West Devon to a road obstruction in Horrabridge, reported Lindsay Turpin who spent the evening on the ‘late shift’.

The shift from 5pm to 3am started like many other jobs — with a meeting!

Conferenced into the meeting were stations from Bideford, Braunton, Barnstaple, Okehampton, Ilfracombe and Holsworthy, to discuss staffing levels and the days events that were continuing into the late shift.

The police won’t plan — or can’t plan — their shift as one day is drastically different from the other but they continue on with their work load as best as possible, while also being ‘on-call’ to the needs of the community.

West Devon, like other sectors, is lucky to have volunteer special constables, who don’t have to undertake the same intense workload that most officers have, and are ‘free’ to patrol the area to show presence in the towns and outlying villages.

On Saturday night, specials sergeant Ben Pateman, 25, and special constable Conor Moxham patrolled Horrabridge, Yelverton, Bere Alston, Tavistock town centre and business units in a police car, and on-foot, and racked up 200 miles in just a few hours.

The patrol was a proactive way to show police presence and to check certain areas usually hit by anti-social behaviour and thefts.

Towards the end of the late shift, sgt Chris Dixon and local police officers, who had been involved in the search for a vulnerable mother and her three-week-old child, were happy to report that they had been found and under the care of social services. The woman had left the home in West Devon on Saturday where social services had placed her and the police had intel that the woman had travelled to Torquay.

The police worked with officers from the area and eventually located the missing woman in the early hours of Sunday morning, in a flat in Torquay. Police forced an entry and took the child into police protection due to immediate concern for the child’ safety.

SC Moxham said: ‘No evening is ever the same here but we do what we can for the good of the community.’