Police Encounters with UFOs | Inspector Roy Teague on UFO Sightings, UAP & Non-Human Intelligence
Source interview: Watch on Mysterious Planet’s YouTube channel.
Interview analysis
Serving West Midlands Police inspector Roy Teague discusses the approximately 250 officer interviews behind his book Close Encounters of the Police Kind, 75 of which were selected for publication. His professional standing gave officers a route to describe experiences they had kept from colleagues. Teague accepts that police officers are not inherently more reliable than other witnesses, but argues that seven reports describe non-human technology. The case files needed to test that conclusion are not presented, although he says operational records and infrared footage once existed for a reported 1997 police-helicopter incident.
Key themes
Professional trust and a hidden witness pool
Teague’s police status gave colleagues a route to discuss experiences they feared would damage their careers. His interviews preserve reports that may never have entered a formal system and document how professional stigma affected disclosure. The archive establishes what officers told Teague; the reliability of an observation still depends on when it was recorded and whether contemporary evidence survives.
Interview method and witness reliability
Teague grades interviews by whether they occur in person, by video or by telephone. He also says he tests reports against 50–60 possible explanations. His acknowledgement that police officers are not inherently better witnesses is important because it prevents professional status from carrying the argument. The published method would be more persuasive if readers could see the questions, exclusion criteria and anonymised case files used for the 75 selected accounts.
The helicopter cases as a documentary test
Teague describes police-helicopter encounters over London in 1979 and 1997. The later crew reportedly used forward-looking infrared equipment and contacted air-traffic controllers, creating the possibility of an operational record independent of later recollection. The original recording, flight log, communications and first statements could establish the sequence and show whether the two incidents share more than a broad resemblance.
Seven cases and a conclusion about origin
Teague attributes seven of the approximately 250 reports to non-human technology. That conclusion goes beyond classifying an observation as unexplained: it identifies both technology and origin. The interview supplies neither the seven case files nor a test that excludes all human and natural possibilities. Their number and the witnesses’ sincerity cannot carry that inference on their own.
Assessment
From a witness archive to testable cases
Teague has assembled a substantial oral-history collection and identified a credible reason why some officers avoided formal reporting. That achievement is separate from his conclusion about non-human technology. Each of the seven cases needs a dated witness account, evidence that witnesses reached their descriptions independently and the contemporary operational or sensor record Teague used to exclude ordinary causes. Releasing anonymised files would make his method visible and allow each reported object to be assessed on its own evidence.
Navigate the source interview
- 1:31 — Teague’s military and policing background
- 3:44 — How a documentary prompted the police-witness project
- 5:48 — Professional stigma and reported repercussions
- 9:29 — Past and present routes for reporting unusual observations
- 12:34 — Whether police training produces better witnesses
- 15:07 — Teague’s interview tiers and exclusion method
- 17:35 — How many reports Teague considers genuinely anomalous
- 21:22 — A reported 1997 police-helicopter encounter over London
- 26:58 — Recent drone incursions and claims attributed to unnamed sources
- 38:46 — Speculation about surveillance, nuclear weapons and protection
- 41:44 — Extraterrestrial, interdimensional and future-human hypotheses
- 50:00 — Claims about unidentified submerged objects and the oceans
- 52:41 — Future books, witness interviews and Policing the Unexplained
Questions
3:44 What prompted Teague to collect accounts from British police officers, and how were cases selected for the book?
12:34 Which aspects of police observation training may improve a report, and which limitations remain?
15:07 How does Teague record, compare and attempt to falsify the accounts he receives?
21:22 Which reports from the time could test the reported 1997 London helicopter encounter?
26:58 Which parts of the recent drone-incursion discussion are publicly documented, and which depend on confidential sources?
41:44 Where does Teague move from unresolved testimony to a conclusion about origin?
Selected quotations
Three full stops (...) mark words omitted from the transcript, including verbal filler or false starts. Every retained word follows the source transcript. Use the linked timestamp or full transcript for surrounding context.
There have been studies on: do police officers make better witnesses than ... civilians? And in the main, believe it or not, the answer is no. We're on a par.
Teague rejects the assumption that occupational status makes a witness categorically more reliable.
I always operate in the ABC principles of accept nothing, believe no one and check everything.
Teague states the investigative maxim he says governs his witness interviews. The unpublished case files would show how he applied it to individual reports.
Sources
- Source interview on YouTube — Mysterious Planet’s full interview with Roy Teague.
- UK National Archives guide to UFO records — Explains the scope and survival of official British UFO files.
- UK Parliament answer on the 2024 RAF-site drone activity — Records that the Ministry of Defence Police was leading the investigation.
Read the full source transcript (plain text). The supplied wording and time markers are retained.