South Wales Police

South Wales Police
Heddlu De Cymru
Agency overview
Formed 1969
Annual budget

£249M

2012–13
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea and Vale of Glamorgan unitary authority areas, UK
South Wales Police operations area
Size 2,074 km²
Population 1,227,200
Headquarters Bridgend

Police Constables

2,862 (of which 99 are Special Constables)

[1]
Police Community Support Officers 400
Police and Crime Commissioner responsible
Agency executive
Divisions 4 (Eastern, Western, Central, Northern)
Facilities
Stations 43
Total vehicles 773
Website
www.south-wales.police.uk

South Wales Police (Welsh: Heddlu De Cymru) is one of the four territorial police forces in Wales. Its headquarters is in Bridgend.

It covers most of the historic county of Glamorgan, including Wales' capital city, Cardiff, as well as Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil, Swansea, and the western South Wales Valleys, it is the largest police force in Wales in terms of population, and the seventh largest in the UK.

Strength and recruitment

In February 2014, SWP introduced a requirement that anyone wishing to become a police constable first studies for the certificate in knowledge of policing before applying for the role. SWP is the first force in Wales, and only a handful in the UK to introduce this.

Police officers

South Wales Police employ 2,862 sworn officers.

Special constables

South Wales Police's Special Constabulary recruit every 6 months.

Police Community Support Officers

South Wales Police employ 400 unsworn PCSOs who are posted throughout the force area. They are mostly funded by the Welsh government.

Support staff

Approximately 1,631 support staff are employed by the force. Their roles vary widely from call handlers to crime scene investigators.

Police Support Volunteers

Police Support Volunteers are used to support police officers. South Wales Police currently have 285 Police Support Volunteers which is their maximum capacity.

History

The force was formed as South Wales Constabulary (the name was changed in 1996) on 1 June 1969 by the amalgamation of the former Glamorgan Constabulary, Cardiff City Police, Swansea Borough Police and Merthyr Tydfil Borough Police.[3][4] In 1974, with the re-organisation of local government, the force's area was expanded to cover the newly created Mid Glamorgan, South Glamorgan and West Glamorgan.

In further local government re-organisation in 1996 the force area lost the Rhymney Valley area to Gwent Police. Today it covers the principal areas of Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea and the Vale of Glamorgan – most of the ancient county of Glamorgan.

Under proposals made by the Home Secretary on 6 February 2006, the force would have merged with North Wales Police, Gwent Police and Dyfed-Powys Police, to form a single strategic force for all of Wales. This issue caused sharp divisions amongst some members of the police force.[5]

The South Wales Police has participated in the World Police and Fire Games since 1995, except for the 1999 Stockholm Games. The current Chief Constable is Matt Jukes.

Chief Constables

South Wales Constabulary (1969)
South Wales Police (1996)

Police stations

New Cardiff Police HQ, Cardiff Bay

The following police stations are operational as of 2018.[7]

Corruption, racism and criticism

The Cardiff Newsagent Three were three men wrongly convicted of the 1987 murder of Cardiff newsagent Phillip Saunders, who was attacked with a shovel in the back yard of his Cardiff home and later died in hospital. Michael O'Brien, Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood were arrested and spent 11 years in prison before being released.

In 1989 the body of Karen Price was discovered in Cardiff, Wales. Two construction workers unearthed a rolled carpet while installing a garden behind a house. It was disclosed that a number of officers from the South Wales Police who were involved in the investigation of Price's murder had also worked on the Lynette White and Philip Saunders murder inquiries, in which six men were wrongfully convicted. Other sources of concern in the Price case, according to the commission, included breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and the PACE Code of Practice, which govern the detention, treatment, and questioning of persons by police officers; the credibility of the prosecution witnesses; "oppressive handling by the police of key witnesses"; and the "veracity of Mr. Ali's guilty plea".

In November 1988, South Wales Police charged five mixed-race men with the murder of Lynette White, although none of the scientific evidence discovered at the crime scene could be linked to them, and a white male was seen in the vicinity at the time of the murder. On conclusion of the longest murder trial in British history, in November 1990 three of the men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In December 1992 the convictions were ruled unsafe and quashed by the Court of Appeal after it was decided that the police investigating the murder had acted improperly. The wrongful conviction of the three men has been called one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in recent times. The police claimed that they had done nothing wrong, that the men had been released purely on a technicality of law, and resisted all calls for the case to be reopened.

In 2004 the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began a review of the conduct of the police during the original inquiry. Over the next 12 months around 30 people were arrested in connection with the investigation, 19 of whom were serving or retired police officers. In 2007 three of the prosecution witnesses at the original murder trial were convicted of perjury and each jailed for 18 months. In 2009 two further witnesses from the original trial were also charged with perjury. Along with eight former police officers charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice, they stood trial in 2011.

The trial was the largest police corruption trial in British criminal history and commenced in July 2011. A further four police officers were due to be tried on the same charges in 2012. In November 2011 the case collapsed when the defence submitted that copies of files which they said they should have seen had instead been destroyed. As a result, the judge ruled that the defendants could not receive a fair trial and all 14 were acquitted.

In January 2012 the "destroyed" documents were found, still in the original box in which they had been sent to South Wales Police by the IPCC.[8]

In July 2016, a former police detective Jeffrey Davies was jailed for two rapes. He was jailed for 18 years after he was found guilty of raping two women. Jeffrey Davies, 45, of Aberdare, was serving in the Rhondda Valley when he raped his victims in 2002 and 2003. Cardiff Crown Court heard he was dismissed from the force in 2013 after being convicted of other sexual assaults. IPCC Commissioner for Wales, Jan Williams, has said Davies was a "sex offender hiding within the police".[9]

Ian Watkins

An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation report, published in August 2017, into the force's investigation of the child sex offender Ian Watkins, found that they had failed a number of times from 2008 to 2012 act on reports of Watkins' behaviour.[10][11] The report concluded:[10]

The consequence of the force’s failings was arguably that a predatory paedophile offended over an extended period of time. The evidence obtained in this investigation suggests that South Wales police were faced with a litany of reports about his behaviour, yet in some instances did not carry out even rudimentary investigation, made errors and omissions and missed opportunities to bring him to justice earlier than he ultimately was.

South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Jeremy Vaughan said his force "entirely accepts and regrets" the findings of the report.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Tables for 'Police workforce, England and Wales, 31 March 2013". HM Government. Office for National Statistics. 31 March 2013. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
  2. ↑ "Alun Michael is new south Wales police and crime commissioner". BBC News. 16 November 2012.
  3. ↑ "Welsh Police Football Association—Teams". Archived from the original on 8 May 2005. Retrieved 1 November 2006.
  4. ↑ South Wales Police Museum
  5. ↑ "All-Wales police force confirmed". BBC News. 6 February 2006. Retrieved 1 November 2006.
  6. ↑ "Obituary: Robert Lawrence". The Independent. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
  7. ↑ "Police Stations". South Wales Police. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  8. ↑ Hughes, Mark (26 January 2012). "Missing Lynette White Files in Britain's Biggest police corruption case found". The Telegraph. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
  9. ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36807896
  10. 1 2 Morris, Steven (25 August 2017). "Police missed chances to stop paedophile Ian Watkins, says report". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  11. 1 2 "Ian Watkins child abuse: South Wales Police criticised". BBC News. 25 August 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
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