POLICE officers from Bromsgrove who were out and about as part of this year’s Christmas anti-drink-drive campaign had their plans disrupted by a runaway sheep.
The officers were pulling over cars on the A38, outside the Upton Warren Outdoor Education Centre, when the animal randomly trotted down the road in front of oncoming traffic.
The officers immediately stopped the traffic both ways and ten minutes of chasing went by as the police – using two unmarked cars, two patrol cars and a motorbike – tried to coax the ‘gate-crasher’ back into a field.
At that point it was not going wool for the chasers but eventually, determined not to be left looking sheepish, the officers got the creature back to where she belonged.
Sgt David Hind said: “We put on a drink-drive operation and ended up chasing a sheep up and down the road.
“In the end, we managed to save a life which, ironically, is what operations like this are set up to do.”
The drink-drive operation itself also went well – 30 motorists were stopped, including some whose cars were not legal because of defective lights and other mechanical problems.
In total 18 tests were conducted and all came back negative.
One man stopped by the police said he had planned to have one pint with his meal during the evening but, having seen officers pulling over motorists on his way to the pub, he decided not to.
Sgt Hind added: “It’s not about how many people we catch drink-driving, it’s not a competition.
“If we can have an evening out there where we test 100 people and no one fails a breath test, then that’s also a good result because it shows we are getting the message across.”
