Actor who played cop in River City facing jail... for impersonating a police officer
AN actor who has played a policeman is a series of soaps was yesterday facing jail after posing as an officer at a traffic jam on a country road.
David Friel, who played officers in Waterloo Road and even a Police Scotland advert, had his car kitted out with blue flashing lights for his role in the BBC Scotland soap River City.
But the 37-year-old then used the vehicle to help him pretend to be an officer two days after he had been filming.
Friel was clad in dark clothing that made him look like a police officer when he approached a tour coach which had stopped to allow a lorry to pass it on a very narrow stretch of the A82 near Inveruglas, Dunbartonshire.
Friel, of Clydebank, near Glasgow, stopped his car while the blue lights were flashing, got out and approached the coach, while giving the impression he was an officer.
He then boarded the coach and started speaking to the driver.
He was only rumbled by chance as the coach driver had previously worked with him, knew he was not a police officer and called Police Scotland.
Friel was tracked down later that day and charged.
The details emerged yesterday when Friel, who has a previous conviction for impersonating an officer, appeared at Dumbarton Sheriff Court.
Last month, he admitted his guilt over the bizarre stunt, pleading guilty to driving his black Vauxhall Astra estate ‘while fitted with blue lights, activating them and leaving the vehicle while wearing dark clothing and acting in a manner calculated to suggest that [he was] a police constable’ on May 4 last year.
Defence solicitor Ian McCarthy said: ‘This is a somewhat unusual charge. There was no suggestion made by him that he was a police officer.
‘The vehicle belonged to Mr Friel and was used as a prop on television and, for this, blue lights had been fitted to the vehicle.’
Mr McCarthy then showed Sheriff John Hamilton a picture of the car parked outside what he described as ‘a pub in a local Scottish soap – quite a well-known programme’.
He added: ‘He had previously attended at a police station and informed them he had this vehicle and that it had been used as a prop on TV and had these particular lights. He recognises he has done wrong.’
The lawyer said the lights had been removed from the car shortly after the offence last year and had been paid for by the prop company which used the car.
But after hearing from a police officer that the lights were still on the car last month, when Friel admitted his guilt, Sheriff Hamilton adjourned sentencing further – and criticised Friel for his actions, pointing out his previous conviction.
He said: ‘This is an extremely serious matter. To do it once is bizarre – to do it twice is intentionally sinister.
‘It is extremely odd and potentially quite worrying.’
The sheriff deferred sentencing until next month for a psychiatric report to be prepared.
Friel, who lost his job at an undertakers as a result of his arrest, has also appeared in BBC medical thriller Trust Me, alongside new Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker.
He was listed as an ‘armed cop’ in the cast list for a film entitled Scottish Mussel, starring Martin Compston.
In February last year, police in Edinburgh probed a series of thefts and attempted thefts where it was claimed a group of men were impersonating police officers. Six incidents were reported to police.
In 2009 strippergram Stuart Kennedy was repeatedly cleared in court after dressing as a police officer for his act.
It emerged police in Aberdeen had spent £170,000 of public money trying to prosecute him.
The case against the performer, whose stage name was Sergeant Eros, collapsed after the Crown dropped charges against him.
Mr Kennedy was a 25-year-old genetics student at Aberdeen University at the time.
He was arrested six times and spent 123 hours in custody over a two-year period from March 2007, without police securing a single conviction.
‘To do it twice is sinister’