West Midlands Police

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Coverage
West Midlands Police
West Midlands Police area
Area	Birmingham, Coventry, Black Country
Size	902 km²
Population	2.6 million
Operations
Formed	1974
HQ	Birmingham
Officers	8,057
Operational Command Units	21
Stations
Chief Constable	Paul Scott-Lee QPM

Website	West Midlands Police

The West Midlands Police is the Home Office police force responsible for policing the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England.

It is the second largest in the United Kingdom after London's Metropolitan Police [1]. It covers an area with nearly 2.6 million inhabitants, which includes the cities of Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and also the Black Country.

The force is made up of 8,385 police officers, supported by 4,033 police staff, 1,066 special constables and 262 police community support officers. This makes it the second largest force in the country behind the Metropolitan Police and followed narrowly by the Greater Manchester Police.

West Midlands is a partner, alongside three other forces, in the Central Motorway Police Group.

1 History
2 See also
3 External links
4 References

[edit] History

A force, called the West Midlands Constabulary was initially created on April 1, 1966 under the Police Act 1964, with the re-organisation of the Black Country area as the five contiguous county boroughs of Dudley, Walsall, Warley, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton. Dudley Borough Police, Walsall Borough Police and Wolverhampton Borough Police were incorporated wholly into the new force, and it also took in part of the Staffordshire Constabulary and Worcestershire Constabulary. ^[1]

The force was initially headed by Chief Constable Norman W. Goodchild until 1967, when he was replaced by Edwin Solomon. ^[2]

The force was merged again, on April 1, 1974, because of the Local Government Act 1972 which created the new West Midlands metropolitan county, which covered the West Midlands constabulary area along with Birmingham and Coventry and a few other surrounding towns. It amalgamated with the Birmingham City Police and parts of Staffordshire County and Stoke-on-Trent Constabulary, Warwickshire and Coventry Constabulary and West Mercia Constabulary to form the present force.

Under proposals made by the Home Secretary on February 6, 2006, it would merge with Staffordshire Police, West Mercia Constabulary and Warwickshire Constabulary to form a single strategic force for the West Midlands region. [2]

Because of the prisons' overcrowding crisis in Birmingham in October 2006 three dozen police cells are to be made available to house inmates in Birmingham to help ease. (By contrast, one contemporary account reported, in 1833, that for days the city gaol had been entirely empty.^[3]) Despite a dip in the number of prisoners in the same month, prisons in the region are close to capacity or already full. Now between 32 and 44 cells have been set aside at Steelhouse Lane police station, in Birmingham city centre in case of emergency. West Midlands Police has an established agreement with the Prison Service to provide cells in the event they are needed.[3]