Five-year-old girl from Derbyshire has 'incredible' day helping Met Police

When Florence asked her dad if she could film a video asking for advice on how police ‘catch the baddies’, no-one was prepared for the barrage of responses from police officers – and police dogs – from across the world.

The youngster, who lives with her parents Tom and Kat in Belper, recorded the two minute long video in January and soon received dozens of messages from as far afield as Kansas and Germany, as well as the Met Police’s Mounted Branch.

Florence explained that her desire to join the police stemmed from an Australian TV show called The Inbestigators – “it's about schoolchildren who help people and solve mysteries”, she said.

Florence received wonderful replies from all across the world in response to her video. One of the replies was an invitation from @DerbysPolice & @ShirebrookFire @DerbyshireFRS to visit them in Shirebrook. Here's a short video of the fantastic time Floss, @TheKatPearson & I had! https://t.co/SCGbuCOyQv pic.twitter.com/MHZojd9pXD

— Tom Pearson (@tompearson) April 17, 2023

Her mum, Kat, said the response the family received from police forces had been ‘incredible’.

Kat said: We were initially going to just post on Facebook but thought we might get a few responses on Twitter… it really blew up, though, and we’ve had responses from America, from the Met, even some police dogs have been in touch. We had answers from all over the world and to see Florence get those videos has been so heartwarming. The overriding message from (police officers) has been that as long as you are being kind and making good decisions then, whatever career you go into, you’ll be doing it for the right reasons.”“The Met reached out and said to let them know if ever we were in London so they could show us round the stables. Then they said ‘oh actually if you are there when it is the Changing of the Guards ask for Sid and he’ll say hello’. We were just expecting to see the stables but we got up there and all three of us were given the VIP experience. It was incredible for all three of us”, Tom added.

Florence and her parents were able to meet the police cat - which catches a lot of mice - with Florence even given a temporary promotion when she was presented with the inspectors hat and a badge from an ARV officer.

Five year old Florence was delighted to be invited by the @MetTaskforce to join them for the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace following her video of questions: https://t.co/SCGbuCOyQv @metpoliceuk @TheKatPearson @GrenadierGds @WelshGuardsBand @Guards_Info @RoyalFamily pic.twitter.com/OAnUFQdeuO

— Tom Pearson (@tompearson) April 19, 2023

She was also invited to visit Shirebrook where friendly competition broke out between Derbyshire’s police and fire departments in a bid to retain Florence’s future services. Florence said the highlight of her experience was ‘meeting all the animals, and learning about the fingerprints’ and that the firefighters’ hose was “a lot more powerful than expected”.

Rachel Swann, chief constable of Derbyshire Police, said in a video message to Florence: “The first thing you need to do is try you very best at school and the other thing you need to do is be a good person and be kind to other people... the things we do are go out and look for clues in terms of who has done the crime and so it involves looking to see if they have left things like fingerprints or footprints at the scene.”