Cheshire Constabulary is the
territorial police force A territorial police force is a police service that is responsible for an area defined by sub-national boundaries, distinguished from other police services which deal with the entire country or a type of crime. In countries organized as federations, ...
responsible for policing the English
unitary authorities
A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...
of
Cheshire East
Cheshire East is a unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The local authority is Cheshire East Council. Towns within the area include Crewe, Macclesfield, Co ...
,
Cheshire West and Chester
Cheshire West and Chester is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It was established on 1 April 2009 as part of the 2009 str ...
,
Borough of Halton
("Industry fills the ship")
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, imagesize =
, image_caption = The Silver Jubilee Bridge at dusk
, image_flag ...
and
Borough of Warrington
(God giveth the increase)
, image_skyline =Warrington from the Air - geograph.org.uk - 3153500.jpg
, imagesize = 280px
, image_caption = Aerial view of Warrington
, image_flag = ...
. The force is responsible for policing an area of with a population of approximately 1 million.
Chief Constable Mark Roberts was appointed in 2021. The deputy chief constable is Julie Cooke, appointed in April 2019.
History
A constabulary was first formed in the county under the Cheshire Constabulary Act 1829 (10 Geo. 4, c.97) which was amended by the
Cheshire Constabulary Act 1852
Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and Historic counties of England, historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Sta ...
. The passage of the
County and Borough Police Act in 1856 led to the dissolution of this force and the creation of a second constabulary. Many of the officers continued to serve in the new force and there were clauses in the Act which allowed their pension rights to continue.
The first chief constable was Captain Thomas Johnnes Smith, late of the
Bedfordshire Militia
Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council was a ...
. The first full Cheshire Police Committee met at the Crewe Arms Hotel, Crewe, on 3 February 1857 and the new Cheshire Constabulary was officially formed on 20 April 1857.
[Cheshire Constabulary: History of Cheshire Constabulary]
(accessed 27 May 2010)
The first headquarters was established at 4 Seller Street,
Chester
Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...
. In 1862 this office was removed to 1 Egerton Street, Chester and remained there until 1870, when it was removed to 113 Foregate Street. In 1893, the Court of Quarter Sessions approved the building of a new Headquarters which was erected at
142 Foregate Street and designed by
John Douglas, at a cost not exceeding £2,000. This continued to be used, together with the adjoining buildings, until 1967, when a new purpose-built Headquarters was opened at Nuns Road, Chester. This building served the constabulary until 2004 when the Headquarters building moved to a purpose-built complex at Clemonds Hey, Winsford.
In 1965, the force had an establishment of 1,359 and an actual strength of 1,329.
It was proposed by the
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
on 6 February 2006, that Cheshire should merge with the
Merseyside Police
Merseyside Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Merseyside in North West England. The service area is 647 square kilometres with a population of around 1.5 million. As of September 2017 the service has 3,484 police of ...
, to form a strategic police force, but these proposals were later abandoned.
The Museum of Policing in Cheshire preserves and researches the heritage of policing in the county.
In June 2022, The Cheshire Police announced that they will start using facial recognition technology in a bid to help identify offenders. The Technology will be used retrospectively to compare images such as CCTV against pictures held on the police national database.
Governance
The incumbent
Cheshire Police and Crime Commissioner
The Cheshire Police and Crime Commissioner is the police and crime commissioner, an elected official tasked with setting out the way crime is tackled by Cheshire Police in the English County of Cheshire. The post was created in November 2012, fo ...
is
John Dwyer John Dwyer may refer to:
* John Dwyer (Australian judge) (1879–1966), Australian judge
* John Dwyer (baseball) (active 1882), American baseball player
* John Dwyer (field hockey) (born 1928), Australian Olympic hockey player
* John Dwyer (medici ...
, appointed in May 2021. Dwyer previously held the post from November 2012 to May 2016. From May 2016 until May 2021,
David Keane David or Dave Keane may refer to:
* David Keane (judge) (born 1964), Irish judge
* David Keane (politician), English politician
* Dave Keane
Dave Keane (born 1956 in Passage West, County Cork, Ireland) is an Irish retired hurling manager an ...
held the office. The police and crime commissioner is scrutinised by the Cheshire Police and Crime Panel, made up of elected councillors from the local authorities in the police area. Before November 2012, the Cheshire Police Authority was the police governance.
Chief constables
The force has had a number of chief constables:
* Captain Thomas Johnes Smith (1857 to 1870) (First Chief Constable of Cheshire)
* Captain John William Arrowsmith (1870 to 1881)
* Colonel John Henry Hamersley (1881–1910)
* Lieutenant Colonel Pulteney Malcolm (1910 to 1934)
* Captain Archibald Frederick Hordern (1934 to 1935) (
Chief Constable of Lancashire
Lancashire Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing the ceremonial county of Lancashire in North West England. The force's headquarters are at Hutton, near the city of Preston. , the force has 3,088 police officer ...
, 1935–50)
* Major Sir Jack Becke (1935 to 1946) (Knighted in
1944 Birthday Honours
The 1944 King's Birthday Honours, celebrating the official birthday of King George VI, were announced on 2 June 1944 for the United Kingdom and British Empire, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The recipients of honours are displayed here as they w ...
)
* Godwin Edward Banwell (1946 to 1963)
* Henry Watson (1963 to 1974)
* William Kelsall (1974 to 1977)
* George Edward Fenn (1977 to 1984)
* David J. Graham (1984 to 1993)
* J. Mervyn Jones (1993 to 1997)
* Nigel K. Burgess (1997 to 2002)
* Sir
Peter Fahy
Sir Peter Martin Fahy (born 18 January 1959 in London, England) is a retired senior British police officer. He was the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), the United Kingdom's third largest police force. He retired from the pol ...
(2002 to 2008)
*
David Whatton
David Whatton QPM is a retired British senior police officer. He was the Chief Constable of Cheshire Constabulary in Cheshire, England. He has previously held chief police officer roles with the West Midlands Police and Greater Manchester Police. ...
(2008 to 2014)
*
Simon Byrne
Simon Byrne (1806 – 2 June 1833), nicknamed "The Emerald Gem", was an Irish bare-knuckle prize fighter. The heavyweight boxing champion of Ireland, he was drawn to England by the larger sums of prize money on offer and his hopes of becomin ...
(2014 to 2017)
* Janette McCormick (acting; 2017 to 2019)
* Darren Martland (2019 to 2021)
* Mark Roberts (2021 to present)
Officers killed in the line of duty
The
Police Roll of Honour Trust
The Police Roll of Honour Trust is a charitable organisation registered in England & Wales and Scotland, it was founded in 2000 and records all those British police officers who have died on and in the line of duty. It has been granted a Royal Cha ...
and
Police Memorial Trust
The Police Memorial Trust is a charitable organisation founded in 1984 and based in London. The trust's objective is to erect memorials to British police officers killed in the line of duty, at or near the spot where they died, thereby acting as ...
list and commemorate all British police officers killed in the line of duty. Since its establishment in 1984, the Police Memorial Trust has erected 50 memorials nationally to some of those officers.
Since 1788, the following officers of Cheshire Constabulary, or its predecessor organisations, were killed while attempting to prevent, stop or resolve a crime:
*Officer John Parry, 1788 (killed arresting a suspect on warrant).
*Police Constable Charles Alfred Cartledge, 1894 (fatally injured stopping a disturbance).
*Police Constable Alfred Kerns, 1900 (fatally injured during a struggle with two men).
Organisation
The constabulary covers the council areas of
Cheshire East
Cheshire East is a unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The local authority is Cheshire East Council. Towns within the area include Crewe, Macclesfield, Co ...
,
Cheshire West and Chester
Cheshire West and Chester is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It was established on 1 April 2009 as part of the 2009 str ...
,
Halton, and
Warrington
Warrington () is a town and unparished area in the borough of the same name in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the banks of the River Mersey. It is east of Liverpool, and west of Manchester. The population in 2019 was estimat ...
.
In 2015, the structure of the force was changed to cover eight Local Policing Units (LPUs) across the county.
* Chester
* Crewe
* Ellesmere Port
* Macclesfield
* Northwich
* Runcorn
* Warrington
* Widnes
Basic command unit structure
Each area has several specialist teams, namely:
* Local Policing Units, each with local neighbourhood policing teams and investigation teams. The units concentrate on responding to both emergency and non-emergency calls, preventing and detecting local crime and targeting offenders, building contacts in the local community, resolving problems by working with local organisations and individuals, and being visible and accessible.
*
Criminal Investigation Department
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch (though officers of b ...
s detect serious crime
* Customer Service Desks ensure incidents are dealt with promptly and the public get a better service
* Public Protection Units deal with domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, honour-based violence, elder abuse and child protection.
* Intelligence Units and Pro-active Policing Units target persistent criminals
* Partnership Development Units
* Custody Investigation Teams, consist of a combination of interviewing police officers and civilian staff members who interview persons detained in the custody suite suspected of committing an offence.
Headquarters-based teams
The following centralised teams operate from force headquarters:
* Central Roads Policing Unit
* Centralised Crime Recording Bureau
* Contingency Planning/Events Coordinators
* Force Major Investigation Team
* Specialised Support Units
Road policing
![Cheshire Police - peugeot 308](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Cheshire_Police_-_peugeot_308.jpg)
The Cheshire road system is made up of of highway. The constabulary is responsible for policing one of the longest stretches of motorway in Britain. The force patrols of the
M6,
M62,
M53 and
M56 motorways, which has 23 interchanges and four service areas. The M6 motorway across the
Thelwall Viaduct
The Thelwall Viaduct () is a steel composite girder viaduct in Lymm, Warrington, England. It carries the M6 motorway across the Manchester Ship Canal and the River Mersey. It is between junctions 20 and 21 of the M6, the former being also know ...
carries 140,000 vehicles every 24 hours. Delays and incidents on the motorway can have a severe impact on the economic life of the entire North West Region.
Air operations unit
The force no longer has an air operations unit. Since 2012 aviation support has been provided by the
National Police Air Service
The National Police Air Service (NPAS) is a police aviation service that provides centralised air support to the 43
territorial police forces in England and Wales, as well as the three special police forces serving that area. It replaced the pr ...
.
Historically, in December 2001, Cheshire Police began operating a
Britten-Norman Islander
The Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander is a British light utility aircraft and regional airliner designed and originally manufactured by Britten-Norman of the United Kingdom. Still in production, the Islander is one of the best-selling commercial air ...
fixed-wing aircraft. It was particularly suited to
police aviation
Police aviation is the use of aircraft in police operations. Police services commonly use aircraft for traffic control, ground support, search and rescue, high-speed car pursuits, observation, air patrol and control of large-scale public events ...
as it was able to carry a wide range of equipment and stay airborne for long periods of time. This equipment allowed it to operate during the day or night, in most weather conditions.
On 27 February 2009, the Constabulary confirmed that the
Home Office had agreed to jointly fund the purchase of a new £1million
Eurocopter EC135
The Eurocopter EC135 (now Airbus Helicopters H135) is a twin-engine civil light utility helicopter produced by Airbus Helicopters (formerly known as Eurocopter). It is capable of flight under instrument flight rules (IFR) and is outfitted with ...
aircraft, to be operational 24 hours a day. The fixed-wing aircraft was retired when the new helicopter came into operation.
The aircraft was operated by a team of civilian pilots, four police observers and one sergeant ensure it was available all year. The aircraft was used to conduct a wide range of policing work providing emergency responses to incidents involving threat to life, commission of crime and searching for missing persons. It also conducted deployments for non-crime searches, scene management at incidents and video evidence gathering.
On 18 July 2011, the North West Air Operations Group was launched. It was a regional collaboration between five forces and police authorities. The service dispatched aircraft from a regional command desk to incidents across Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and North Wales.
The five forces in the North had four helicopters, based at four different locations throughout the North West, providing a service anywhere in the region, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Race and sex discrimination in recruitment
In February 2019, Cheshire Constabulary was found guilty of discrimination, having refused to give an applicant a job because he was a white heterosexual man. Despite the applicant, university graduate Matthew Furlong, being judged to have been "well prepared", he was nevertheless rejected for the job with the force falsely claiming that 127 of the other candidates had been equally suitable for the role, a claim an employment tribunal described as a "fallacy". The tribunal was told that Acting Chief Constable Janette McCormick believed "passionately about positive action" and it ruled that Furlong had been a victim of direct discrimination on the grounds of his sexual orientation, with the case believed to be the first in the UK of an organisation misusing positive action to discriminate illegally.
Collaborations
Cheshire Constabulary is a partner in the following collaborations:
* Alliance Armed Policing Unit (Cheshire and North Wales)
* Cheshire and North Wales Police Dogs
*
North West Police Underwater Search & Marine Unit
*
North West Motorway Police Group
The North West Motorway Police Group (NWMPG) provides a regionalised policing service for the motorways within the Cheshire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester Police areas. It was established in June 2008 in partnership with the Highways Agency. ...
* Safer Schools & Young People's Partnerships
Crime statistics
Between 2005 and 2007, Cheshire Constabulary's crime statistics for recorded crimes were:
PEEL inspection
(HMICFRS) conducts a periodic police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) inspection of each police service's performance. In its latest PEEL inspection, Cheshire Constabulary was rated as follows:
Cheshire Constabulary and the media
During 2005/06, the force was featured in the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
TV series ''
Traffic Cops
''Traffic Cops'' is a British documentary series broadcast on Channel 5 (and formerly on BBC One) which follows Roads Policing Units from various UK police forces. It has consistently been one of the most watched factual series on UK televisi ...
''.
Former Chief Constable Sir
Peter Fahy
Sir Peter Martin Fahy (born 18 January 1959 in London, England) is a retired senior British police officer. He was the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), the United Kingdom's third largest police force. He retired from the pol ...
called for the legal age of buying alcohol to increase to the age of 21 as a result of the
Garry Newlove
Garry may refer to:
Names
*Gary (given name) or Garry
*Garry (surname)
Places
* Cape Garry, South Shetlands
*Fort Garry, Winnipeg, a district in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
*Garry Lake, Nunavut, Canada
* Rural Municipality of Garry No. 245, S ...
murder in 2007.
Series 3 of ''
999: What's Your Emergency?'', which aired in mid 2016, followed officers from Cheshire Constabulary alongside Ambulance crews from the
North West Ambulance Service
The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS) is the ambulance service for North West England. It is one of ten ambulance trusts providing England with Emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service, receiving direct ...
.
During 2017, Cheshire Constabulary was featured in series 12 of
Channel 5' TV programme ''
Police Interceptors
''Police Interceptors'' is a British factual programme that profiles the work of elite police units from across the UK. There have to date been 21 series to fate following police units from Essex, South Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Cumbria, Lincolns ...
''.
In early 2019, a ten-part series focusing on the work of Cheshire Police's Vehicle Maintenance Unit aired on the TV channel Dave.
In 2021 a new spin off of the show Motorway cops started following the roads and crime team in the series Motorway Cops:Catching Britain's speeders again for a
Channel 5's commission,
[ ]
Arms
See also
*
*
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom is organised separately in each of the legal systems of the United Kingdom: England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Most law enforcement is carried out by police officers serving in regional pol ...
References
External links
*
Cheshireat
HMICFRS
His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), formerly Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), has statutory responsibility for the inspection of the police forces of England and Wales, and since ...
Museum of Policing in Cheshire
{{Authority control
Police forces of England
Constabulary Constabulary may have several definitions:
*A civil, non-paramilitary (police) force consisting of police officers called constables. This is the usual definition in the United Kingdom, in which all county police forces once bore the title (and som ...
Constabulary Constabulary may have several definitions:
*A civil, non-paramilitary (police) force consisting of police officers called constables. This is the usual definition in the United Kingdom, in which all county police forces once bore the title (and som ...
1857 establishments in England
Government agencies established in 1857