It’s Monday morning and PC Dan Sutherland tells me he has just accepted delivery of a box of dead crows as he makes himself a cup of coffee. I’m already convinced his role in the force is an unusual one. Sutherland is the wildlife crime liaison officer for the Highlands and Islands division of Police Scotland – the subject of a new BBC series Highland Cops.
The five-part documentary shadows police on the UK’s biggest beat, covering 12,000 square miles of lochs, glens, islands and mountains, an area like no other in the country. From the crofts on Hebridean Islands to the inner-city estates of Inverness or searching for missing people in the wilds, and providing policing for royals visiting the Isle of Skye to attending fatal road traffic accidents, these officers go to extremes.