PC Mat Evans who has been with the West Midlands force for more than 20 years – was in London when he witnessed Mohammed Uddin stabbing a man.
Mat bravely put himself between the victim – who’d been stabbed in the chest – and Uddin before pulling out his warrant card to show he was a police officer.
He ran off but PC Evans chased him down, rugby tackled him to the floor and prised the knife from his grip.
Uddin, aged 36, was later jailed for more than 12 years for the attack which happened outside Royal London Hospital on 12 October 2019.
PC Evans went on to receive a bravery award from the Met Police and another accolade at the National Police Bravery Awards.
And last week he made it a hat-trick of gongs after he was presented with a Pride of Birmingham Award in the Emergency Services category.
PC Evans recalled what happened on the day: “Thankfully when I confronted Uddin he ran…but then your police brain kicks in yelling ‘catch the bad guy’. Years of rugby training comes in handy when you want to put a bad guy on the deck. But I knew I had to control the knife because there was no doubt in my mind he’d turn it on me next.
“He was struggling violently and pulling on my beard…that’s what angered me most!.
“Incidents like this make you realise being a police officer isn’t a job, it’s a state of mind you can never turn off, even when not at work. When I saw the guy being stabbed, for me there wasn’t a choice to make, I had to stop him before he killed someone.
“It’s a real honour to have received a Pride of Birmingham award. But having worked in policing for more than 20 years I know there are officers doing equally brave things every day of the year – I’m no better or braver than them.”
PC Evans ‘day job’ is going after robbers and thieves in Birmingham city centre.
He has been a Birmingham PC for 23 years but for the last decade has devoted much of his work to tackling pickpocket gangs who plague town and city centres across the UK.
He’s put countless crooks behind bars and has been the driving force behind an operation that sees police forces the length and breadth of the country share intelligence on offenders, emerging crime trends and new tactics used by thieves.
It resulted in the number of pickpocket type offences falling by almost a quarter in the city centre.
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