Fake police officer ordered woman to stop on motorway

Lisa reported the man as soon as she could when she stopped, but by then she was in the Derbyshire force area.

She was told that he was a Northamptonshire police officer and because it was initially treated as a complaint against a police officer rather than a crime, it was Northamptonshire who first dealt with it.

It began an investigation, and over the following months established that the man was not an officer but had worked in a civilian role with the force, working for a contractor, and had left the role months before Lisa reported him.

Northamptonshire passed the complaint to the Leicestershire force because Lisa was driving in its patch, and it needed to be dealt with as a crime report.

By this stage all CCTV footage from the time had gone, and it took until the end of August for Leicestershire to log it as an alleged crime of impersonating a police officer.

Because of the delays, this was almost at the end of the six-month limit for prosecuting such an offence.

Leicestershire says it then ran out of time and did not speak to the man. It has apologised to Lisa.

In a statement, it told BBC News: “Leicestershire police takes any report of impersonation of a police officer extremely seriously. However, on this occasion our response did fall below the expected standard.”