DC Chelsea Noble

So, my name's Chelsea Noble and I'm currently a Detective Constable at Northamptonshire Police. I have now been a detective since, for about a year.

In my spare time, I just try to spend as much time as possible with friends and family. Especially doing this kind of job, it's a way to decompress, a way to switch off from work, and just be Chelsea I guess.

I think Northamptonshire's really different in the fact that we have lots of quite big, busy towns and then you can drive 20 minutes and you're in the middle of nowhere and it's very rural and we have big farming communities.

My friends and family were really excited about me joining the police. I think some of them were shocked because I'd never really shown any interest in joining the police before. It was actually a family member who sent me the advert for becoming a police staff investigator and I thought 'I've never thought about the police before' and once I kept thinking about it I thought 'I can really see myself doing that'.

I like interviewing people. Whether that's working on a case and putting those pieces of a puzzle together and then getting someone in for an interview. I think it's really exciting to have to get your head around everything that we've got and then go into an interview and ask someone questions about that.
There's definitely things that stick with you and particular incidents that stay with me. You know, some things that you attend are really traumatic and really difficult and sometimes you have to give families horrendous news and that's what really stays with me.

Yeah, I think there is maybe one incident I can think of that's really had an effect on me and I didn't expect it to. I think that's what's maybe shocked me about that.

We deal with missing people a lot, and it was a missing person. It was an elderly gentleman with dementia who'd gone missing from the hospital, I think while his wife was parking the car. That happened maybe two weeks after my own grandad had been diagnosed with dementia and that was really difficult but I was in the crew that had to go and look for him and I think it really hit me, the multitude of what was happening in my personal life. So, it's really difficult to have to put my own emotions aside, and my own concerns and just try and find that gentleman, which we did and we got him home safe and sound which was great but that really had a big impact on me.

We had reports of a male that had allegedly committed a number of sexual offences in one day I think maybe 10, 11, 12, there were allegations against the same male. The control room started to make the link that maybe these incidents were linked and it got allocated to CID and with lots of other colleagues we worked on that. I think one day I worked 23 hours straight because we'd found him, we had to interview him and put this case together to present to the CPS and, you know, there are moments when you think 'wow I am tired' but we only have 24 hours to deal with someone while they're in custody and we wanted to get that outcome for all those vulnerable women who were assaulted so that really pushed me to my limits, maybe physically and mentally. That was really difficult but, again, we got 13 charges out of it and it was an absolutely great result.

What advice would I give to someone thinking about becoming a detective? There's going to be lots of concerns that you're going to have, lots of what ifs. How is this going to effect my personal life? What will the shifts be like? Can I do it? Just go for it, take the risk, it is the best job in the world, some days you might think it's the worst job in the world but there are definitely so many highs and you'll get to do a job that's really like no other, so any concerns you have, just go for it.