A young police super-fan, who adores and idolises the work of Leicestershire Police’s uniformed officers received a special home visit to be hand delivered the force’s first Christmas card, which he designed.
Jay, eight, opened his front door yesterday (Tuesday 15 December) to see Chief Constable, Simon Cole at his doorstep thanking him personally for his first official police mission in designing this year’s Christmas card, being sent out to many this festive season.
The young boy, from Market Harborough, had been asked by the team at Leicestershire Police for his help after becoming noticed on social media for being in admiration of his ‘real life superheroes’.
The wonderful design, hand-drawn by Jay himself, sees a police officer wearing a face covering and a police dog standing by a Christmas tree, a very relevant take on this year’s situation.
Jay said: “I had so much fun drawing the 2020 Leicestershire Police Christmas card and meeting Simon Cole again. The first time I met him was on my tour of the force HQ last year. Things are a bit different now but I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year.”
As the son of one of the force’s response officers, Jay was inspired by his dad’s job and began voluntarily patrolling his home town streets. He helped with litter picking in the winter months last year, and soon became noticed by the town’s Inspector, Siobhan Gorman.
Jay’s mum, Hayley said: “It was soon after Jay was patrolling the streets back in 2019, we made him a Twitter account which I manage. From there, Jay really started to get recognised and it took off.
“His account under his preferred title ‘Chief Inspector Jay’ now has nearly four thousand online Twitter followers from all over the world. Many of which coming from Canada and America, but also as far as Russia too!
“We’ve been fortunate enough to have received amazing collectables from these people such as police patches, pins, challenge coins and hat badges. This has helped Jay create a collectors wall at home full of items sent from his online supporters.
“It’s been absolutely amazing to make people smile through sharing Jay’s passion for policing. We never thought it would become such an uplift for other officers and for us as his parents as well.
After the year we’ve had, it’s just lovely to share our story and provide a little Christmas community spirit through Jay designing the 2020 Christmas card.”