Joining Up

Those who will have read my blog before will know that I sometimes refer to my days in the police force... well that all seems a different life now, having since spent time as a teaching and afterwards working in the NHS.

As I came to do my blog today I realised it was one of those Red Letter Days in my life! Yes, it's the 9th November and it occurred to me that this date was the anniversary of me 'joining-up' as a British bobby many moons ago! So I headed to the cupboard, where I keep old photos and documents and I came across one tatty old file containing letters, photographs and a pile of old diaries from way back when.  In my search through the papers there, I came across one of the first images taken of me as a North Wales Police officer, taken at what was then 'Police Training Centre Wales'  situated at Cwmbran in South Wales -  a facility which opened in July 1974, being the first purpose-built police training centre in the United Kingdom. However just 21 years later, in 2005, the centre was closed down, rendered obsolete in these ever changing modern days when perhaps the place didn't suit the political climate. 

Following closure, the site was left to go to rack and ruin, as can been seen from the images taken here.

In the subsequent years since closure, the whole site was levelled to the ground and was sold off for housing development.   Now in excess of 500 houses occupy the site and you'd have no idea that the police facility was ever there. 

I hear they call such planning moves 'progress,' but the centre, which had initially cost a fair old penny to construct,  wasn't that old and was a great facility for Wales and the UK as a whole in terms of training police officers; something which apparently now take place at a 'force-level.'  As a result of this 'in-house training' which favours the politically-correct academic 'policing-degree' bobby, with attached micro-management, we've lost the bobby on the street who was able to think for him/herself with some autonomy and therefore have some discretion over decision making when dealing with the public.

I hear people constantly asking why they never see a bobby on the beat any more and bemoaning the loss of traditional old policing values, such as turning up to the report of a crime on a timely basis.

Policing by consent... I wonder what happened?  Such a shame. 

Here's a reason given for the closure of such training centres.

To finish, here's a video of one of the passing out parades at Cwmbran (not mine, but from 1984) which brought back so many memories!

#policing #policetraining #britishbobby