Supercop: I had to quit job I loved after breakdown
‘Machine who didn’t sleep’
A POLICE officer nicknamed ‘ Supercop’ for his astonishing arrest record has told how he had to quit the job he loved after it affected his mental health.
Ali Livingstone was hailed as Britain’s most prolific officer after making more than 1,000 collars in 18 months.
His tally of at least 12 arrests per week was more than the average officer makes in a year. But he left the force after 20 years when the strain of handling ‘life and death’ policing left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.
The downward spiral came after he moved from beat duties to specialist roles.
‘I was identified as this officer who made loads of arrests and was well-known by the criminal fraternity and that was very much my role for a number of years,’ he said. ‘All of a sudden I was becoming involved in specialist roles... I became a search adviser dealing with high-risk missing people and major crime scenes, murder scenes.’
During his career with Suffolk Police, the former sergeant clung on to a suicidal man dangling from the roof of a multi-storey car park for six minutes, found a woman’s body in a car boot and was threatened by a man wielding a samurai sword, threatening: ‘I’m gonna cut you up.’ The 38-year-old also lost a colleague, PC Cheryl Lloyd, who was killed when her patrol car crashed into a lorry in 2005 when on a 999 call.
Mr Livingstone said he had a crisis suddenly in 2018 when he had just observed a police operation at a football match in Manchester.
‘When I got back to the hotel I had a complete breakdown and couldn’t function,’ he said. ‘I left all my belongings behind and got on a train. It came out of the blue.’ He spent a year trying to recover but said he felt his ‘ resilience shatter’ every time he tried to return.
Earlier this year he tried a civilian role with the force – but found his mental health being affected again. He now gives pastoral support to pupils at a Suffolk secondary school.
‘They used to refer to me as a “machine” who didn’t sleep, lived for the job and just never stopped,’ he said. ‘I felt like I was indestructible and that I would never suffer with any form of ill-health, let alone have a mental breakdown.’ However, he insisted police forces were ‘ ahead of the curve’ at recognising mental health issues – but can only give staff so much support.
After ten months working with a consultant he was referred to NHS mental health services who ‘unpicked what was going on’.
Now, he has written a book about his experiences – Broken Blue Line: How Life As Britain’s Supercop Broke Me – which was released yesterday.