Former PSNI officer Peter Sheridan began his career in policing aged 16 after being encouraged by a Catholic priest who taught him.
After joining the RUC cadets as a 16-year-old in 1976, he was posted to Derry two years later and remained there until 2003.
He reveals how he was encouraged to join the police by his former teacher, Fr Peadar Livingstone.
“Unusually I probably didn’t choose it, my careers' teacher in St Michael’s in Enniskillen was a Catholic priest who was an Irish historian who probably, if I was at my most benevolent, probably didn’t like most things British.
Read More:
Former PSNI officer Peter Sheridan to head up investigations in new Troubles legacy body
“For some bizarre reason at 16 when I went in to do my careers interview, he talked about the police and unknown to me he had also talked to another fella in the class.”
Mr Sheridan described Fr Livingstone as “an Irish man through and through”.
After applying to the MET, and Gardai, which didn’t respond, the teenager joined the police cadets.
“I suppose in some ways there was a bit of naivety from me while at 16 I wasn’t thinking a lot about politics or what was happening, I was following George Best and Denis Law and the girls from the Collegiate school up the road.”
As assistant chief constable, he was responsible for rural policing between 2003 – 2006 when he took over the PSNIs Crime Operations Department, which included the C3 intelligence unit, often referred to as Special Branch.
In 2008 he retired from the PSNI after 32 years and was later appointed as chief executive of Co-Operation Ireland.
During his time in the RUC he escaped death on several occasions.
In June 1982 he arrived on the scene just minutes after RUC colleague Reggie Reeves was killed in Derry’s Shantallow estate when a booby-trapped television blew up.
Five years later, in March 1987, he narrowly escaped death himself after civilian prison lecturer Leslie Jarvis was shot dead by the IRA outside Magee College in Derry.
Two RUC men were killed in an explosion when they arrived at the scene a short time later.
“I was only yards away when the bomb went off and killed the two detectives,” he said.
He said he later thought about a “profound sense of sadness about all those lives that had just been snuffed out”.
Mr Sheridan recalls how he escaped injury after the Land Rover he was driving was struck in a sniper attack in Derry and how on two separate occasions he was moved from his home as a security precaution.
On another occasion plans were put in place to attack him while he attended church on a Sunday.