When Cleveland Police announced PC Stuart Smith, Saltburn’s much-loved beat officer, was to leave, the locals fought to save him. Owen Amos joined him to witness the art of community policing.

ON Friday a strange thing happened in Saltburn. I travelled back in time. First, it was sunny: broad, blue, cloudless skies, the sort that usually accompany test matches in Australia. People in short sleeves licked ice creams and shielded their eyes from late September sun. This can’t be 2008, I thought. On this island, the sun disappeared sometime in 2006, like Sven Goran Eriksson’s England career.

Second, there was a policeman on the beat.

He smiled at strangers, chatted to those he knew – about 90 per cent of the population – and quietly upheld law, order and good manners.

This definitely can’t be 2008, I thought. These days, policemen are handcuffed to desks, faces obscured by piles of paperwork, only emerging when there’s a road to close. But it was 2008 – I checked the paper – and the policeman was PC Stuart Smith.

PC Smith, 46, of Cleveland Police, has worked Saltburn’s beat for five years. Six weeks ago, he was told he would spend his last two years before retirement in Teesville, east Middlesbrough.

The 90 per cent of Saltburn’s population that PC Smith knows weren’t happy.

“After news got out, people said ‘You’re moving? We’re going to start a petition’,” said PC Smith. “You think it’s just talk. Then the next day the petition was there, with my mugshot taken off the internet. When shops heard about it, they put a petition up and it built from there. It was very pleasing to be held in that regard. You’re not going to please everyone all the time, but you do your best.”

Earlier this month, after putting his case to Cleveland’s chief constable, he was saved for Saltburn. “I was delighted,” he said.

I joined PC Smith on his afternoon beat, expecting to bump into one or two people he knew. After all, how many policemen on your town’s beat do you know? But, within five seconds we met Jan Leaver, a retired teacher from Saltburn Primary.

“He’s absolutely fantastic,” she said. “I was a nursery teacher – Stuart used to come in quite regularly and talk to the kids. It just started that respect from a very young age. Now, when they see him in town they say ‘Hello PC Smith’. He would have been really missed.”

That was lucky, I thought, bumping into a glowing testimony so quickly. But there, one minute after leaving the station, was another.

“I wrote to the assistant chief constable, he was on holiday, so I wrote to the chief as well, trying to keep him,”

says Cliff Leach. “He knows the bad lads, knows the good lads – knows where the bad lads hang round.”

And, 20 seconds later, by the train station, another.

“He has good relations with business, local people, young people,” said Sue Anderson.

“When you have those connections, it makes all the difference, because every community, at the end of the day, wants to live in peace and harmony. He respects people and they respect him by giving information when he needs it.”

It wasn’t lucky, I realised, bumping into these people.

After all, when 90 per cent of people know you, chances are you’ll get stopped. It was like accompanying Kevin Keegan through the Bigg Market, and expecting to go unnoticed.

Carlsberg don’t do police adverts, but if they did, they’d film in Saltburn.

PC Smith – or Stuart, as everyone knows him – is like a character from Britain’s mythical, but much-mourned, Golden Age: when every street had a butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, and every beat had a friendly bobby. I half expected Just William to emerge, or Dennis the Menace, so PC Smith could give them a clip round the ear.

After the testimonies came a test. PC Smith was called to the benches by the station, where a drunk was asleep, face up, like a cat soaking up the sun. PC Smith knew him, obviously, woke him – eventually – then offered to walk him home. The drunk insisted he’d walk himself, shook Stuart’s hand, then meandered off.

Law, order and good manners quietly upheld.

We went to the beach on the cliff lift. PC Smith knows the people, of course – they poked fun at a recent goatee beard experiment – and gets on free, as does the journalist. There never were such times. After being stopped a couple of times – “I’m so glad you’re staying Stuart, so glad,” one woman said – we walked to Camfield’s coffee and juice bar in Valley Gardens.

Guess what? Stuart knows the owner.

AFARMER’S son, PC Smith joined the police in Redcar in 1980, aged 18. “A farm labourer’s pay isn’t great,” he said. In 1980, he said, there were two vehicles for the whole town, so policemen learnt, literally, on the hoof. “It was a good grounding, speaking to people, getting to know the coffee shops,”

he said. “Now, you join on the response side.

They’ll go to all sorts of incidents, in the car straight away. My personal view is I don’t think that’s a very good way.”

He got a vehicle after six years but, by then, had learnt the art of policing. “I always think you’ve got to treat people as you’d want your mum and dad to be treated,” he says. “It’s amazing when I walk the beat. People say ‘This is strange, seeing police on foot’. I say ‘You’re obviously not from Saltburn’.”

But after 28 years, he said, paperwork has increased “ten-fold”. “Sometimes you have just got to say ‘Stop it, I’ve got to get out and away from the paperwork’. “It’s increased ten-fold in my time. At times it’s very frustrating.”

How much time does paperwork take up?

“Perhaps 45 per cent of my time,” he said, after some thought. “It varies day to day. And my paperwork isn’t as much as a response officer, as they have more incidents.”

PC Smith isn’t just affable and approachable: he’s a real, roving community workhorse. He lives in Guisborough with his wife and two boys, 18 and 21, but is vice chair of the Saltburn in Bloom committee, a governor at Saltburn Primary, a member of Saltburn Forward and a Friend of Saltburn Pier and Cliff Lift. “It’s a close-knit community and you have to get involved,”

he said.

His last arrest was a month ago, a lad who breached his Asbo. PC Smith was head-butted for his troubles. But, a month on, this smiling policeman didn’t even have a bad word for him.

“I’ve arrested him before and it’s out of character,”

he said. “I got about 30 get well cards.”

We left Camfield’s – “He’s an asset to the town,” said owner Boyd Camfield – and began the walk back up the steep, winding cliff road.

Then, as if by magic, a police van passed and whizzed us effortlessly back. Perfect. It was that type of day.