Neil retired from West Midlands Police in 2018 having achieved the rank of Chief Inspector. During his very varied career he has been a Response Officer, Detective investigating many offence types including homicide and Neighbourhood Policing initiatives.
Getting promoted into the senior ranks in 2009 saw Neil head the two main control room functions, introducing new technology and streamlining activity to improve systems and processes to achieve better outcomes for service users. During this time also saw Neil leading the Command and Control element to the Olympics 2012 for West Midlands Policing Region.
Later in 2012 Neil moved into the newly formed ‘Force Incident Management’ team whereby he, along with 4 colleagues, became permanent ‘Silver Commanders’ for the organisation. As such Neil responded, as the on-duty senior Commander, to many major/critical incidents. He has delivered successful outcomes to sieges (armed and unarmed), pre-planned firearms operations as a Tactical Firearm Commander, Public Order operations including match day command for football games, complex missing person searches, Counter Terrorism activity and large scale community evacuation due to the discovery of a viable device.
Alongside operational command delivery Neil led the Joint Emergency Service Interoperability (JESIP) liaison with colleagues from West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) and West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS). Through 2016 Neil designed and delivered a series of one day command development workshops for WMFS on the use of the Joint Decision Model (JDM). His collaboration led to being awarded a ‘Partnership Award’ from the WMFS Chief Officer. Neil has also been the Commander during very large scale multi-agency exercises with special forces military personnel for MTFA activations.
Neil retains his close links with West Midlands Police to ensure he maintains a CPD approach to his expertise with the JESIP Doctrine, in particular the use of the JDM.
Prior to his career with the force Neil was a Senior Aircraftman in the RAF Fire and Rescue Service for 5 years. He served mainly at RAF Cottesmore, developing a passion for aviation (he owns and fly's a microlight!).