This year I am again participating in the annual UK Police Unity Tour raising funds for the charity Care Of Police Survivors (COPS). I appreciate this is another big ask, having personally raised in excess of £5000 through this event since 2018. My intention was only to participate in one event and I was hooked through the overwhelming emotions that accompanies participation.

This year as part of the 20th Anniversary of the COPS Charity, I will again be riding in memory of a fallen officer. My Cover photo is from a recent presentation of my riders band to Gill Coward, the widow of the late DC Ian Coward QPM, who I rode in memory of in 2022. Ian was fatally wounded when he was shot 9 times whilst attempting to arrest an armed suspect in 1971, leaving Gill to raise their 10 month old son Matthew, in times where the support available today, simply wasn't there. 

COPS provides peer support opportunities and access to counselling services to help surviving family members (‘survivors’) rebuild their shattered lives."Your loss is a part of who you are but COPS helps you realise that it doesn’t define you. We are all one big family." Since its foundation in 2003, COPS has helped hundreds of police families devastated by the loss of a loved one who died on duty.

This event has now raised in excess of £1,000,000 since the first ride of the Unity Tour in 2013 and has seen the opening of 'Unity House' for use by Survivors Family & Friends. Your donations continue to make a huge difference to all those bereaved families