In the past couple of days, officers from the Maldon Local Policing Team (LPT) have been deployed to a variety of incidents on the early shift - including domestic disputes, a report of concern for a man's welfare, speaking to the worried mother of a high-risk missing person and conducting local inquiries on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.

Many of these incidents are fairly usual for a local policing team officer.

But slightly more out of the ordinary was the collision involving a bus and a car parked next to a shop in South Woodham Ferrers.

The car had been pushed into the front of the shop in Hullbridge Road, trapping the car driver. He was cut free by firefighters using specialist cutting equipment and taken to hospital by ambulance.

PC Jack Morgan said: "We arrived at the same time as the ambulance so, while they attended to the car driver, PC Charlie Bell and I checked on the bus driver as our main priority at any incident is to preserve life. A second ambulance crew then took care of him.

"Other officers from our LPT and roads policing team spoke to witnesses and made sure that no-one else who had been there when the collision happened was unaccounted for.

"We also closed the road to make it easier for the ambulance crews and the firefighters, who had to cut the car driver out."

Elsewhere, one officer guarded the scene of a burglary until crime scene investigators had finished gathering evidence and then came across a broken-down vehicle causing an obstruction at the top of Market Hill in Maldon.

He closed the road and called for assistance from nearby roads policing officers, who towed it to a garage.

PC Alex Williams, who has been with the team since last November, said: "The car was causing a significant blockage and the town was gridlocked because it was lunchtime on a really nice day."

His colleague PC Charlie Bell arrested a 34-year-old man who arrived at Maldon Police Office asking to speak to a police officer because he had been told that officers were looking to arrest him on suspicion of breaching a non-molestation order.

PC Charlie Bell came to Maldon in June but has served with Essex Police for almost three years, always on a local policing team.

He said: "Every day is different and you help such a vast amount of people. Everyone needs the police at some point in their lives and if we can help one person every day then I think we are doing our job.

"Some jobs aren't as they seem, sometimes. Sometimes they are worse, sometimes they are better.

"Take the collision between the bus and the car – we thought we were going to something that wasn't good. But he came out of the car just suffering from chest pains, which was very lucky but we'd been expecting the worst. It's nice when it's not the worst.

"Every job, there's always something more behind it. We get the initial call and we have to go with the information from that, but when you sit down and talk to people to understand what's gone on you get more information."

PC Alex Williams joined Essex Police in June 2020. He said: "I really enjoy this job. It's different every day – I come into work and I don't know what I'll be doing, which is so different from a normal job where you know roughly what you'll be doing all day.

"I was a sales rep before so it's still face-to-face with the public, which I enjoy, but it's certainly different to selling things."

Maldon LPT sergeant Martin Andrews said: "Our officers have to be very dynamic in their approach to policing in this area because they can be dealing with a crime in a rural location, such as hare coursing, one minute and then get called to anti-social behaviour outside a town pub the next.

"The thing we all have in common is that we want to keep the residents of our district safe and arrest those people who are intent on causing crime in our communities.

"But we need those communities to help us to do so by reporting criminality to us when they see it, via our website or by phoning 101.

"Of course, if it's an emergency or a crime in progress, then always ring 999. Here, that could include seeing fly-tippers in action and people stealing agricultural machinery, as well as a burglary or people arguing heatedly in the street."