After a hard day at the office or on the factory floor most people are happy to put their feet up at home. But for one special group of Wiltshire people another job awaits. CAMERON RAMOS joined a group of Special Constables on night duty to find out what their uniformed role involves.

BY day Julie Fletcher juggles motherhood with her job as an administrator at Chippenham Hospital.

But in the middle of the night she could be out on the streets searching people for drugs.

As a Special Constable, a volunteer officer with Wiltshire Police, it can mean working in her full-time job from 9am to 5pm, and then being out on the streets tackling crime two hours later.

Mrs Fletcher, 43, who signed up as a Special a year ago, said she enjoys her double life.

She said: "My day job is great and I'm very happy there, but I really like the variety that being a Special gives me. Being a Special means that I have a total mix of duties, but I am still able to work that around my work and family life."

When reporter Cameron Ramos joined her on the beat, the shift had been on duty for five hours. This is his report:

There were five Specials, crammed into the police divisional crime van as we head for our first patrol in Malmesbury.

Section officer Paul Lewis, another special who works by day as a call centre manager, takes the van around some of the town's trouble spots.

We cruise past the Cloister Gardens and Station Yard car park and Special Constables Mark Cook and James Fry brave the cold to do a quick recce around the abbey but all is quiet. We go on to Chippenham to check out the Emery Gate car park, a haunt for drugs and for racing cars.

The radio comes to life. The alarm at Redlands Primary School has gone off so we are going to secure the area.

A squad car is already at the scene and we scour the perimeter of the building to see if we can see anything, but we stop when we find out the blind of an open window had triggered the alarm.

At Emery Gate several souped up cars lurk in the bottom level of the car park. The Specials block every exit but are eventually satisfied there is no real problem.

Calne is next and it is Special Constable Mark Cook's patch. He told me what he gets out of being a Special.

He said: "It's something I get a great deal of satisfaction from, because I feel that I'm putting something back into the community it's a job like no other."

The radio crackles again and we are called to a pub to deal with a fight that has broken out. One man has an injured lip and blood is pouring from his mouth. We are told a man came in, punched the injured man in the face and left. Nobody wants to press charges so there is little the officers can do.

We are told of trouble in Melksham. When we arrive a youth is being arrested for a public order offence by five officers and is pinned against a squad car. He is not coming quietly as the officers struggle to get him in the van.

One officer said that it is zero tolerance tonight after some trouble the night before.

When locked up, the arrested youth's attitude changes quickly. In tears he wails: "I didn't do nothing," all the way back to the station. He is taken into the holding cells where it is likely he will spend the night.

It is around 1am and the drinkers begin to spill out on to the streets, to the taxi ranks and fast food outlets. Drunk young women cling to each other as if they are walking across the deck of listing ship; flesh exposed by mini skirts and low cut tops. Men shout at each other or look menacing. Some hurl abuse or stare at the van.

I sense it was only a matter of time until the radio explodes into life again.

Trouble at a burger bar, more police at the scene. A girl is shouting at a woman officer who eventually has enough and arrests her on a public order offence.

"It's not my fault, it's unfair," is her complaint from the cage in the van in which she had been put on the way back to the station.

"I was threatened. Speak to my boyfriend, he'll tell you," she said.

One Special tells me: "Her boyfriend was more interested in the burger and chips we took when we arrested her."

We drop our load again at Melksham and head out on the streets. It's 2am. We see a red Renault hesitating at a roundabout. We follow it and the car veers from the kerb to the white line and back again.

We pull the car over and the driver, a young woman, is asked to get out. She smells of alcohol but denies drinking.

Paul explains the breath test to her. Her story changes now. She has had a couple of drinks but thought that she would be still okay to drive. She blows hard into the portable breathalyser. It is positive.

We drop the young girl's boyfriend, who is drunk, off in Melksham where he can get a taxi home.

The woman does not have to go in the cage and sits in the back seat between two officers.

I can hear her faint sobbing and she asks what is going to happen to her.

Paul explains she will have to have another test on a machine that can accurately measure her alcohol levels. It later records she has twice the legal limit of alcohol and will have to stay in the cells overnight.

Her cell door slams. My last view of her was sitting on the bed, head bowed and crying.

For the Specials it was just the end of another night, another shift.