Talk:West Midlands Police

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Open-licenced images

Excellent news: the West Midlands Police Flickr stream now uses CC-BY-SA licensing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:28, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Major rewrite, December 2012

This article was the subject of an extensive rewrite and reformat during December 2012 with detailed information added about the force's structure, departments and more. I think that it now stands up well in comparison to most other UK police force wikis, there are areas though that I'm looking to improve as and when which are as follows:

Add detail to the history of the force since 1974 - currently it skips from its formation in 1974 to 2006 with no events between.
Obtain a list of former Chief Constables, possibly will approach the force for this information
Expand on some of the departmental descriptions, particularly the section on the Special Constabulary

Richard Stanley - Richardjstanley (talk) 14:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Police employee numbers

As people are interested in police numbers, here are some links to official data:

Home Office (July 2010). Police Service Strength.

Home Office (July 2011). Police Service Strength.

Home Office (July 2012). Police Service Strength.

Home Office (July 2013). Police Service Strength.

Kookiethebird (talk) 21:28, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated

Needs a number of updates - ACC Rowe left. DCC Thompson back from secondment. Chris Price left some time ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.152.1.186 (talk) 22:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Updated all names and titles in structure chart, based on information on the West Midlands police website. Added reference to the structure chart for future updates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.150.163.44 (talk) 20:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Officers killed in the line of duty

I'm not sure what to do with the "Officers killed in the line of duty" section, sourcing-wise. The Police Roll of Honour Trust page doesn't look like a reliable source; there are sources for a couple of the names listed but I haven't been able to find anything usable for the others. In the absence of good sources it might be best to merge the bits that can be sourced into another section. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 10:18, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with you on your quest to identify and root out the pointless and badly sourced, but the Police Roll of Honour Trust is probably the most trustworthy single source for information on officers killed in the line of duty. It is the official national source of such information and has a Royal Charter from the Queen recognising this. That's not an award or honour, its a confirmation of status. It is very definitely a reliable source. I would still however like to see as many entries as possible backed up by other sources such as local or national news reports, but any entry verified against the Police Roll of Honour is good enough to stay here. 10mmsocket (talk) 12:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear I would put the trust on a par with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or National Archives. --10mmsocket (talk) 12:30, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@10mmsocket: It's definitely possible I've misjudged, but I'm not really seeing much evidence for the PRoHT's reliability. Nothing on its "about" page or the "research" page tell us anything about who carries out research for them or what sources they use, which suggests to me it might be user-generated consent – i.e., at least in the older cases, entries based on people writing in about their relatives and the like (similar to the Officer Down Memorial Page which has a similar function in the U.S.). Is there any other info that would clarify these points, or any prior discussions that you know of? (I couldn't find anything in the WP:RSN archives.) – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The charity's objects on the charity commission website include these two items "(A)THE PROVISION OF A RECORD OF ALL THOSE POLICE OFFICERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN A MANNER THAT DICTATES THEIR NAME BE ADDED, HISTORICALLY OR CONTEMPORANEOUSLY, TO THE UNITED KINGDOM'S POLICE ROLL OF HONOUR; (B)SUPPORT THE ONGOING RESEARCH TO ENSURE ACCURACY AND RELEVANCE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM'S POLICE ROLL OF HONOUR;"

Those objects, created when the charity was established in 2000. I have been involved with a charity during the time that it was striving to achieve a royal charter. From what I saw (obviously WP:OR there is no way an organisation that paid lip service to its founding principles would have achieved that charter. That serves to reinforce my confidence in the reliability of the information held by the police trust here. 10mmsocket (talk) 20:50, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, it probably makes sense to assume that a royal charter would strongly indicate the reputation for fact-checking etc. that we require. (I'd welcome others' thoughts though if anyone happens to be passing.) I've found additional sources for some of the dead officers so will add them too in due course. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:27, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Crime stats

I've updated the crime statistics table (which hadn't been updated since 2012/13) with data for 2020/21, but would be interested in others' views on whether we need something like this or whether it veers into WP:INDISCRIMINATE territory. I think it's probably useful provided the amount of data isn't excessive, but the flipside of that might be that giving data for one year divorced of context doesn't tell the reader much (perhaps especially given that 2020/21 was a fairly atypical year). I haven't been able to find any secondary sources we could cite on this or use as a guide for what's relevant. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:39, 3 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that the stats add much to the article and they don't feature much in other UK police articles. What I would be keen on establishing is a data source that could be used to present the same data for each force in its respective article. For now I'd be OK with no stats in this article. 10mmsocket (talk) 06:42, 4 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A data source of that sort would be interesting, though if it involved any intricate template work I'd personally be unable to be much use. It would also, I think, still require an answer to the above question about how to avoid either presenting too much information or providing insufficient context. Either way, no objection to you removing the existing table if there aren't any arguments for keeping it in the next week or so (or sooner if you feel it has to go urgently). – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:02, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Special Constabulary training

Any chance we can remove the fantasy line in the Special Constabulary section that training for Specials is 22 weeks? Absolute rubbish. It may well be 22 weekends, although even that I doubt, however specials training is not 22 consecutive weeks. Since around 2016, the forces that offered 18 weeks training have gone down to 10 weeks and even regular Police officers havent had training for as long as 22 weeks since the regional PTC's were disbanded in around 2006. 2A00:23C6:938B:DC01:58C6:6823:40AD:20E8 (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]