I’ve spent the last three decades in policing - as a uniformed officer, as a roads policing specialist, Cleveland’s first female armed response officer, and now as a chief constable. In that time I’ve seen a huge cultural shift in attitudes towards women in policing, from a culture where women were a tiny minority and were issued with a force handbag on joining, given a stockings allowance and told we were only allowed to wear trousers on nights, to one where women make up an integral and ever growing part of the service.
The Modern Slavery Police Transformation Unit has published its first annual report.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) latest assessment of police effectiveness concludes “most police forces are maintaining a good standard of service to the public, despite dramatic increases in demand and ongoing financial pressures, but cracks are beginning to show.”
Responding to reports of the number of recorded wanted or missing registered sex offenders, National Police Chiefs' Council Lead for the Management of Sexual Offenders and Violent Offenders, T/CC Michelle Skeer, said:
The new head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing has used the launch of a campaign about terrorist attack planning methods to reveal that more than a fifth of reports from the public produce intelligence which is helpful to police.
On Wednesday, we held a one day conference for chief officers of all ranks in London. With the aim of ensuring that attendees were briefed on national issues, this conference was designed to enable colleagues to work together more effectively.
More than 26,000 motorists have been caught using a handheld mobile phone while driving in the first year since harsher penalties came into force.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has released a report highlighting the scale of dog attacks on livestock - livestock worrying - and the challenges faced by police forces in supporting farmers to deal with the issue.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council has supported proposals for selected probationers to be able to carry Taser after completing a rigorous application and training process.
The acquittal of a 17 year-old for rape and the collapsed trial of Christopher Penniall revealed further failures of disclosure, and they reinforce how critical it is we address the problem, particularly when police recorded crime shows a rise of 23 per cent in sexual offences and the Crime Survey of England and Wales tells us one in five women has been sexually assaulted.
All forces commit to a week of targeting knife crime hotspots, conducting weapon sweeps, engaging with affected communities and testing whether retailers will sell knives to young people.
The National Police Chiefs' Council has responded to the report by HMICFRS regarding police leadership.