Meet the West Midlands police inspector behind Britain's biggest UFO investigation

For more than 26 years, Inspector Roy Teague has built his career on evidence.

The 51-year-old, who was born and raised on Ashmore Park in Wolverhampton, served six years in the British Army, completing operational tours in Northern Ireland and Bosnia before joining the police.

Since then he has spent more than two decades on the frontline with West Midlands Police, working on emergency response, proactive policing and the force's elite firearms unit as both an Authorised Firearms Officer and Tactical Firearms Commander. His career has included protecting members of the Royal Family and senior politicians, arresting dangerous armed offenders and receiving commendations for bravery from both a Chief Constable and a High Court judge.

It is a career built on observation, evidence and judgement.

But away from the day job, Inspector Teague has spent the last several years pursuing a very different investigation.

His new book, Close Encounters of the Police Kind, is the result of interviews with more than 250 serving and retired police officers who claim to have witnessed UFOs or experienced other unexplained phenomena.

Rather than accepting every story at face value, Teague says he approached the accounts as he would any police investigation, interviewing witnesses in detail and attempting to rule out conventional explanations before including them in the book.

Yet despite approaching the subject as an investigator rather than a campaigner, Teague says the project has changed how some colleagues see him.

"I can tell you now that I'm regarded less seriously now than I was six months ago, purely because I've collected other people's accounts," he said. "I get a lot of banter from the other PCs, the sergeants and the inspectors, they'll take the mick and that's fine.

"I've had people call me Inspector Spaceman, I've been mocked up as ET or in Independence Day, and that's all funny, I love the banter as it’s good for the soul.”

What concerns him more, he says, is the reaction from some senior colleagues.

"Where I have a problem is where some officers of a higher rank regard me less seriously now than when I began this project - purely because of my interest in unexplained phenomena - that's a shame."

Despite that, Teague says he has no regrets.

"When we join the police we are taught to be seekers of the truth,” he explained. "Even if that truth involve instances of high strangeness involving the mysterious and bizaare. The truth is the truth no matter the subject."

That philosophy, he says, is what motivated the project.

Teague says many officers were initially reluctant to speak because they feared exactly the sort of reaction he has experienced.

"There’s a stigma. Ridicule. Professional damage to the officer's career,” he said. “If you're applying for a role within the service and you've got a reputation for being someone interested in UFOs and the paranormal there are people who won't believe it and likely won't put you in the role ahead of someone who hasn't put their head above the parapet.

"I think that just because of an interest I have in a topic I'm regarded less professionally than I was, but I don't regret it because I was sworn in as a seeker of the truth no matter what obstacles are thrown up."

Over the coming weeks, the Express & Star will examine the investigation behind the book, the personal impact it has had on Inspector Teague's policing career, and the extraordinary accounts from West Midlands officers who say they witnessed things they still cannot explain.