Cheshire Constabulary

• 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) [9]
• Lt Col Pulteney Malcolm (1910 to 1934)
• Captain Archibald Frederick Hordern (1934 to 1935) (Chief Constable of Lancashire, 1935–50)
• Major Sir Jack Becke (1935 to 1946) (Knighted in 1944 Birthday Honours)
• Mr Godwin Edward Banwell (1946 to 1963)
• Mr Henry Watson (1963 to 1974)
• Mr William Kelsall (1974 to 1977)
• Mr George Edward Fenn (1977 to 1984)
• Mr David J. Graham (1984 to 1993)
• Mr J. Mervyn Jones (1993 to 1997)
• Mr Nigel K. Burgess (1997 to 2002)
• Sir Peter Fahy (2002 to 2008)
• Mr David Whatton (2008 to 2014)
• Mr Simon Byrne (2014 to 2017)
• Ms Janette McCormick (Acting; 2017 to 2019)
• Mr Darren Martland (2019 to present)

The Constabulary covers the following council areas:

• Cheshire East
• Cheshire West and Chester
• Halton
• Warrington

In 2015 the structure of the force was changed to cover eight Local Policing Units (LPUs) across the county.

• Chester (covers the City and the surrounding rural area)
• Crewe (covers Crewe, Holmes Chapel, Nantwich, and Sandbach)
• Ellesmere Port (covers Ellesmere Port and Neston)
• Macclesfield (covers Congleton, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Poynton, and Wilmslow)
• Northwich (covers Northwich and Winsford)
• Runcorn
• Warrington
• Widnes

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 Departments 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.

To support the BCUs, several centralised teams operate from the headquarters:

• Central Roads Policing Unit
• Centralised Crime Recording Bureau
• Contingency Planning/Events Coordinators
• Force Major Investigation Team
• Specialised Support Units

The Cheshire road system is made up of 3,417 miles (5,499 km) of highway. The constabulary is responsible for policing one of the longest stretches of motorway in Britain. The force patrols 214 miles (344 km) of the M6, M62, M53 and M56 motorways, which has 23 interchanges and 4 service areas. The M6 motorway across the Thelwall Viaduct 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.[10]

In December 2001 Cheshire Police began operating a Britten-Norman Islander fixed-wing aircraft. It was particularly suited to police aviation 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 £1 million Eurocopter EC135 aircraft, to be operational 24 hours a day.[11] The fixed-wing aircraft was retired when the new helicopter came into operation.

The aircraft is operated by a team of civilian pilots, four police observers and one sergeant ensure it is available all year. The aircraft is 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 conducts 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 is a regional collaboration between five forces and police authorities. The service dispatches aircraft from a regional command desk to incidents across Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and North Wales.

The five forces in the North have four helicopters, based at four different locations throughout the North West, providing a service anywhere in the region, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

With 24-hour cover, the collaboration enables the five forces to cope better with demand, with efficient use of all four helicopters, whilst enabling forces to make further savings and maintain resilience across the region. This is a move away from the concept of having one helicopter serving one region, to adopting the identity of one unit with support provided to all five forces

The collaboration allows for considerable savings, while offering an improved air support service. Benefits of the arrangement include the facility to have the closest helicopter deployed quickly to any incident and if there are two incidents in the same force area, then two helicopters can be deployed as necessary.

The force’s air operations unit has now been absorbed into the National Police Air Service.