PC John Winder estimated that a large proportion of his work involves the same four per cent of the population.

We spent the afternoon with John, a police officer for 27 years, in the force’s Ford Transit van. It contains two cells and multiple CCTV cameras. It is used to respond to emergency calls and transport people to Runcorn’s custody suite.

“If a person runs out of hospital with a cannula in their arm you have to find them,” said John.

“We look for people who have failed to attend court, missing people, shoplifters, disqualified drivers, people with mental health issues.”

He said most crimes tend to be influenced by drugs or alcohol.

“We don’t think it is any more violent than it used to be but when there is a violent incident they are that much more extreme because of the use of cocaine and all drugs. Nothing can stop drug-crazed people.

“Cocaine is having a massive effect. I get 15-year-old lads squaring up to me under the influence. It is incidents like this which raise the issues for the need of police using tasers,” he said.

His most memorable experience since starting the job was working on the day of the IRA bombs in 1993.

He said: “It was just the sheer enormity of it all and what we were dealing with. And how it doesn’t matter where you are you can be caught up in a serious national incident.”

One of PC Winder’s fondest memories in his career was saving a pensioner who was still breathing but had no pulse. She had collapsed in the Golden Square more than 20 years ago. He administered CPR and she survived.

He said: “My most memorable experiences include arrests for something that affects the members of the public that you work for, or arresting somebody who has deceived an old person, or finding a lost child.”

More recently he said he felt proud to have made an arrest at Poplar 2000 in Lymm last year. The people arrested were caught with more than a million class A tablets.

He added that paper work was the downside of the profession.