COMBING the streets searching for missing people to avoiding being hit by a spade-wielding maniac is all in a days work for a police officer. Sergeant Mark Porter, 42, a divorced father of three, works at Accrington's busy police station. He tells My Life why he swapped regular life as a joiner for the chaotic world of policing.

Q. What time do you get up?

A. I'm up at 6.30am most mornings. I start at 8am but virtually every day I work longer than the 8am-4pm shift. One thing I'll say is that you have to be passionate about what you do in this job. I work every other weekend as well, although I don't have to do night duties any more.

Q. What’s your daily routine?

A. As the tasking co-ordinator everything comes to me. I have a daily meeting where we look at what's happened, what's likely to happen in 
the future and how we are going to respond it to stop certain things from happening.

Q. What do you love about the role?

A. You never know what's going to happen from day to day, there's always something different. One specialism I have is that I'm a police search advisor. I can get a phone call in the morning on the way to work to say that somebody has gone missing who is a vulnerable person. I then have to put a different head on and start thinking about resources and the things I need to try and track this person down as soon as possible.

I plan the search and would contact mountain rescue teams, the force helicopter and co-ordinate how we are going to go about it. The one recently I've been involved is the Guilfoyle case who first went missing back in May. If there's a rumour it's our job to asses the nature of the information and react accordingly. That scenario is totally different to sitting in a warm office with a cup of tea in front of my computer.

Q. What’s the strangest thing that has ever happened to you?

A. One interesting job happened in Pennine Division when I was on the support unit. We were called to an extremely violent person who had 
smashed his partner’s house up. We were outside and he wasn't responding to CS spray. He had a spade and was smashing everything up 
and was throwing paint out of a window at officers and anybody who was passing.

He had smashed the sink off the wall - the house was completely trashed and he was just shouting and shouting. We had to go in with shields and arrest him as a team which took us quite a while to subdue him. He was hitting us with a spade and even knocked an officer out even though we were fully kitted up. We eventually arrested him and when it came to cautioning him he said: "What have I done wrong?" that brought a bit of a smile - it was funny but it does show that's the sort of thing we're up against.

Another funny time was when we were called to an incident involving a tramp who was outside a pub with a bottle of beer. He was in his 60s 
and was causing a nuisance so we had to go and speak to him. He sat up and started shouting abuse but when I went to arrest him it became 
clear that in his younger days he had been a boxer and started dancing around the streets swinging punches. I just about managed to avoid the punches and he was arrested but I still get a ribbing to this day from colleagues about that.

Q. What has been your proudest moment?

A. I was commended by the judge in the case involving the man and the spade for bravery but at the time it was something I didn't even think about. I won an commendation a couple of years ago for the work I did in Accrington town Centre. We brought in quite a few different things which included the Crystal Clear campaign which banned drinking in the streets in the town centre. I was commended for the work I did with partner agencies and the shop keepers.

Another very proud moment was when I was promoted to be a sergeant. I had to take two exams one was a law exam and the other was a 
practical one. I joined the police when I was 29 years old. I am a joiner by trade and I spent time teaching building in colleges but joining the police was something I'd always had at the back of my mind. I did apply when I was 19 but didn't manage to get in. I became a bit disolusioned with the building trade so I applied for the police and never looked back. It was the best decision I ever made.

Q. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

My old boss used to say don't do mad when your mad if that makes sense. It's better to go away and calm down and come back and deal with the situation when you've had time to reflect and calm down. One piece of advice I would give to anyone thinking of joining the police is that you've got to be prepared to give up a lot of things and family life can suffer if your not careful about it but the satisfaction the job brings is definitely worth all the hard work.