Northants police officer Julie Mead retires after 30 years of groundbreaking work in the force

Growing up in the County Durham mining town of Ferryhill, there was only one job Julie Mead ever wanted.

At 18 she applied to every force in the country and it was Northamptonshire Constabulary where she was offered her first job.

And thirty years on, it’s the end of an award-winning career that’s changed the lives of hundreds of young people for the better.

She had wanted to join the police ever since beat bobby PC Burns came into her primary school when she was just eight.

When she arrived in Northants, WPC Mead was given a ladies’ sized baton to put in her police-issue handbag to go with the black skirt she had to wear on duty.

In those days, playing pranks on new officers was a regular occurrence and one day while out on patrol alone, she was called to Towcester Road Cemetery as the sun was rising. She thought the report of a grave robbery was a joke, but it wasn’t, and it remains the only grave robbery she's ever attended in three decades.

She was the force’s first police dog handler and the first woman to be given trousers instead of a skirt because her work involved climbing over a lot of fences.

Her first arrest with her dog Geordie came after a machete-wielding robber ran out of a casino near Campbell Square police station.

And she met her husband Chris, himself then a young bobby, after he promised he’d already thoroughly searched a car park for a criminal who was hiding there – only for her to turn up with her dog and sniff him out. The pair have been married for 24 years and Chris is also due to retire in a few months’ time.

She speaks fondly of old colleagues who’ve inspired her – among them legendary coppers Dennis Murray and Andy Frost – and of the partnership work that she says has been transformational for the force.

She’s worked in a range of roles including in public protection, with rural officers in East Northamptonshire and latterly as custody lead for the force. But it’s her work with children and teens that brings her alive.

Chf Insp Mead moved to Corby’s neighbourhood policing team in 1998 and she considers the town her adopted home. Times were tough back then for Corby, and it was there she met her pal Ann-Marie Lawson, a no-nonsense county council employee who was working the Kingswood Neighbourhood Centre at the heart of the town’s toughest estate.

"The Kingswood had so much anti-social behaviour at that time,” says Chf Insp Mead.

"I went into the community centre and Ann-Marie was stood there and she asked me who was responsible for the crime and what it was they were doing.

"The next morning I came in and looked at the crime and anti-social behaviour incidents for the night before and there weren’t any. I thought my computer had broken.

"Ann-Marie had rounded them all up and organised a game of midnight basketball.”

Between them they started the Jam – Julie and Ann-Marie – team and manged to get £5,000 in funding for some early intervention projects and a detached youth worker from town centre manager Dan Pickard.

"We managed to cut anti-social behaviour by 60 per cent in those first three months,” she says.

The Jam team went on to win numerous accolades and awards and gave hundreds of Corby kids a better chance of staying out of the criminal justice system.

"I could see the difference that the police can make. Take away the Tasers and dogs and fast cars. Take it away. It’s about the difference you can make if you understand the issues, by being a human being, being a part of the community around you and building up trust.”

She’s incredibly proud of the kids she’s helped and smiles as she speaks about one who is now the landlord of a nearby pub, and another who she bumped into recently who had become a social worker.

Chf Insp Mead was also instrumental in setting up the highly successful Northants Emergency Service Cadet scheme, again with her pal Ann-Marie who is now executive director of the scheme.

She only has two of her many accolades on the wall of her office – her Tilley award for her groundbreaking work with the Jam team and her negotiator qualification.

She’s the person who shows up when people in the middle of crises are threatening to jump from bridges or high buildings. In 13 years she’s never lost anyone.

She says in her time as negotiator she’s seen a positive shift in the level of understanding toward mental health and the emotionally unstable personality disorders that drive many to threaten to take their own lives.

Her final role has been as the force lead for custody, and as she shows us around her custody suite, she’s as proud as if she were showing us around her own home. She’s spent years working out how to make sure the 70 children each month who come into Kettering custody suite don’t come back again.

Chf Insp Mead was behind the pioneering TIC TAC custody approach – trauma informed custody for trauma affected children – that was pioneered in Northamptonshire. Children who come into custody have blackboards on the walls in their cells that they can write on, they have access to televisions and rubber bands to stop them from self-harming.

She also noticed that young arrestees weren’t eating the adult-focused custody food so she bought a load of Pot Noodles, cereals and orange squash.

"If they’re coming into my custody suite and smashing up the cell, that just creates more work for us. So I just thought we’d make custody a bit easier. We know these kids have often had really traumatic events in their lives the contribute to them entering the criminal justice system and it’s best for them and us if we try to prevent them from coming back here again.

"We thought they might write some awful stuff on the blackboards but they usually draw some really lovely stuff.

"So many of them are in crisis when they arrive here. They’re not going to engage if they don’t feel comfortable.”

Kids who come into custody have a safe space where they can speak to youth workers, social workers and gang-prevention workers from CIRV.

"We want to get them off that roundabout,” said Chf Insp Mead.

Detailed monitoring will take place after the defendants leave custody to see if the system is working – with the hope that youth offending rates will drop.

So what next for Chf Insp Mead? She says she’ll do the big holiday, the new kitchen and a few months off, but after that, a new career beckons – although she’s not yet decided what that’ll be.

"I’ll still be volunteering with Ann-Marie,” she says. “I don’t think she’ll let me leave!”