Never off duty | Heroic officer courageously intervenes to take on machete wielding robbers

“We’re never off duty”

On 2nd November 2024, off duty Met officer PC Attwood showed incredible courage in Luton town centre by confronting two men who had stolen an e-bike in a knifepoint robbery.

Armed with machetes they attacked PC Attwood, stabbing him multiple times.

Bedfordshire Police were able to identify the attackers and swiftly arrest them. They have now been sentenced to seven years in prison.

In this video, PC Attwood and Bedfordshire Police Deputy Chief Constable Dan Vajzovic reflect on the events of that day, what it means to serve and the courage it takes to go towards danger.

[Music] uh I’m PC Atwood um I’m a street tutor tutor attached to Enfield and Haringay um and I’m a survivor of a knife attack that happened whilst off duty on that Saturday uh me and my wife went into town thought just have a bit of nip in some food and nip out there’s a ramp that leads up to the mall and we were standing at the bottom of it and I noticed a chap go past on a moped he didn’t have a helmet on didn’t have VRM and I just said to my wife “Look just hold this i’m going to go and have a look.” I think the job gives you the confidence that you can talk to people i introduced myself as a police officer i told him not to be so stupid and next thing I know it it all just went a little bit mad it just happened so quickly in my head i thought I’d just sort of stop him there but he dropped the bike and then they both came towards me and I think there was like a realization that it I’d been hit i was uh on call as our strategic firearms commander um and I was phoned by our our on call inspector saying uh there’s been a offduty officer been stabbed and the world falls away from you at that point
so I retreated a little bit started taking some photos i wasn’t sure that CTV would pick anything up and one of them said he’s he’s filming us or something i thought if I can pick up one of the barriers at least stop him from driving past in my head I thought I’d just throw it at him but ended up sort of kind of batting him with it um and then the knife was kind of coming towards me quite a few more times one of them must have connected with my with my chest which left the worst injury none of us really know what we do in a circumstance like that until you’re in it and from having spoken to PC Atwood he saw something that wasn’t right and he went forward to intervene and he didn’t think about whether he was on duty or off duty he was a cop through and through and he stepped forward because it was the right thing to do policing is a vocation and PC Atwood’s actions are in the very best tradition of that vocation you you can see that there’s quite a lot of people that could have been injured and there was one really really lovely chap he went into Don Miller and he came out with a a bottle of water and he said “Do you want a drink mate?” And I was like “Thanks mate.” And he said and then another chap was like “I’m on the phone to the police.” And he showed me his phone and it said 911 on his phone and I thought “We’re going to be be waiting a little while for the American police to come over.” But it and I laugh at that cuz even now it’s kind of a way of processing it and I kid you not it was probably less than a minute that I felt I heard all the sirens turn up and I was just so kind of relieved that help was on the way
i remember really clearly um walking into the hospital and seeing PC Atwood um and introducing myself he said “Hello Gov why are you smiling?” uh in this horrendous situation i had such a sense of relief to see a bloke standing in front of me able to to you know move talk to function um and that it wasn’t as serious as it might have been i think the whole force felt proud of PC Atwood in that moment of him working in the best tradition of policing if you put a uniform on irrespective of uniform you put on we’ve all got this hidden ability to want to help people there’s an old saying we’re never off of duty off duty which in my case at that time was true the chap that was robbed of his of his bike he he he didn’t go into town to get robbed i didn’t go into town to get stabbed we just went around our our normal day-to-day jobs but I’m just kind of glad that I managed to do something special or different in a in a time where I was just going to get a give up i can’t thank PC Outward enough for making Bedford cheer safer through his action thankfully incidents like this are rare but police officers do 24 hours a day 7 days a week put themselves in the line of danger the whole the whole team of have I don’t know they’ve just kept me informed of everything that all relevant i just have to say thank you to them because they they’ve made some really nice comments about me and I don’t think I’ve ever had chance to to thank them back so I do thank them wholeheartedly when an event like this takes place we we pull together everybody who I spoke to on the day and subsequently as part of the investigation wanted to do their very best to to not just get justice for PC Atwood but also to to make our county safer [Music] [Music]