Pope joined the police in 2005 and remained close to anonymous in the force until 2011, when he met Morris. “He brought a photo to me,” Morris recalls, “and told me he wanted to grab an officer and find the guy in the photograph and arrest him.” The image, which Pope had noticed on a police bulletin, featured a man wanted for assault, but it was grainy and shot from an awkward angle. Morris was sceptical – “I said to him, ‘I’d struggle to recognise my own mother in this photograph’” – and he demurred, but Pope was confident, and he turned out to be correct. As soon as the suspect was arrested, he broke down. “He admitted to it right there and then.”
Morris was stunned. When Pope correctly identified another suspect, and another one after that, and showed absolutely no signs of slowing down, they realised the ability was remarkable. From then on, when Morris spoke to contacts in other police divisions, he would inform them of Pope’s skill, and offer out his services.
But take-up was limited. Sometimes Morris worried that Pope’s ability was being wasted. Here was an individual somehow able to identify hundreds of wanted suspects, being underused. “We all considered it,” Morris says. “Is there another application?”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member