Talk:List of law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories

Information Commissioner's Office
Surely, the ICO in the UK is considered as a law enforcement authority, responsible for (inter alia) the UK Data Protection Act (2018). 217.138.133.34 (talk) 11:37, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

[Untitled]
User:Dibble999 and I have been bold and worked on a re-write of the article that makes this more of an article rather than just a list, and talks about the varying types of force and jurisdiction. We've done a bit in a sandpit but I'm now sticking it here to stop any forking of the article. All additions / critisisms welcome! Sapient 23:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Please be courteous
I have edited this artickle with legitimate material relating to law enforcement activities undertaken by the Fire Authority and Local Authorities in the UK The do have a legitimate Law Enforcement function and should be included witthin this article Whoever keeps deleting it please kindly discuss why you are deleting them! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.244.223.82 (talk) 15:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Title
Nik Staines via Infowar Social Networking Coalition about an hour ago ·

BREAKING CHEMTRAIL SCIENTIST MURDERED AFTER GOING ON NATIONAL RADIO www.youtube.com Environmental Scientists Eugene Franklin Mallove, Juventina Villa Mojica and Dorothy Stang murdered after releasing lab test results linking chemtrails to th... Like · · Share  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.102.97.95 (talk) 21:12, 27 July 2013 (UTC) I do not think the title of this article is quite right, as its a bit more than just a list now. I would suggest Police Forces of the United Kingdom or something similar. Any thoughts/better ideas? Dibble999 08:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe we could merge the non-list content into Policing in the United Kingdom? I think having both a police forces of the United Kingdom and a policing in the United Kingdom would be confusing.  Morwen - Talk 21:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't reckon it would be good to merge them. Having an explanation of the various types of police force and an explanation of jurisdictions etc with the list is, I think, more beneficial to someone who has no knowledge of the police system in the UK. It also breaks up what would just be a long list otherwise. However I agree that the name change I suggested might be confusing. I suppose leave it as it is for now? Dibble999 02:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

List of former forces
I removed Warwickshire and Coventry Constabulary because it was just a merger of two existing forces without an interesting name. This is not exactly consistent, but I think if we add this type of force we should add them all. But then it gets rather tricky - do we list the pre-1974 Lancashire Constabulary as a former force? Morwen - Talk 22:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we should include all forces which have changed their name, unless that is merely from "Constabulary" to "Police". -- Necrothesp 20:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * So that means we include Essex and Southend-on-Sea Joint Constabulary despite the fact that it saw just a rename to Essex Police in 1974 not an actual change in territory?  Morwen - Talk 10:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, strictly speaking it was an entirely new corporate entity with a different name, just covering the same area. Owain (talk) 11:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * And yes, I do think we should include it. -- Necrothesp 16:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Done. Morwen - Talk 16:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Liverpool had Market Police from 1860 to 2005, presumably other cities had similar police forces?    --jmb 00:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Volatile template
Some of you might have noticed the UK Police template has been quite volatile recently. Your input is welcome: Template talk:UK Police. Thanks/wangi 13:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Serious Organised Crime authority
Something needs adding to show the existance of this new national enforsement agency

see http://www.soca.gov.uk/

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sumo su (talk • contribs) 18:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC). --Sumo su 15:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Americanised Title
The title and first paragraph of this article appears to have been regionalised to fit USA parlance. In the UK the term 'law enforcement agency' is rarely, if ever, used. The first paragraph has been drastically re-written to the point where it doesn't make sense in terms of day to day policing of the public and there are a number of points which I take issue with. Dibble999 (talk) 17:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * policing ≠ law enforcement. this article used to be concerned soley with preventative police forces which was inaccurate. we haven't even mentioned local councils who have powers for dog waste etc. if you have specific points, please raise them here :) ninety:one 17:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I would take issue that the article used to solely be concerned with 'preventative' police forces. The territorial police forces conduct and obtain the vast majority of investigations and detections into crime in the UK so 'preventative' isn't accurate for starters. The term law enforcement agency is extremely American, and as already pointed out is not used in general parlance in common speech in the UK or professionally by the criminal justice system. The problem with the start of the article is that it outlines 4 types which are involved in policing the general public. This does not really reflect reality. 95% of all public - 'police/law enforcement' contact will be with the territorial police forces with the special police forces coming a distant second (BTP mainly) and the others way behind within their extremely specialist/limited remit. The conceivable list of organisations which have executive powers (such as the dog mess and local authorities you mention) could make this article incredibly large and unwieldy. The amount of organisations which are beginning to creep into this article is making the article diluted. Policing does not fully = law enforcement as you state. Even members of the public can conduct law enforcement. My viewpoint is that this article was far more useful and relevant when it described and outlined the various police forces and true policing organisations such as SOCA and UKBA. You could then link this article to other non police organisations that have limited executive powers such as HSE and RAIB. Otherwise I think the article is beginning to lose its way. The average reader I think, would look at this article to look at the police forces. Those interested in a more thorough look at the plethora of other organisations with legal powers could follow a link. Dibble999 (talk) 23:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * policing is but a subset of law enforcement. this article is about the agencies, so the every person powers are irrelevant. every country article is 'law enforcement in x'. in britain, we have become used to the vast majority of law enforcement being carried out by police forces. but in the last few years, SOCA, UKBA and others have got more powers that justify their presence in this article. if someone came looking for police forces, they would find a short description at the very top of the page, and their local force in the first section. this article presents an overview of the LEAs, with the police coming first. i'll try to make the distinction clearer now. ninety:one 11:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

On re-reading my previous input, I probably came across as a touch stroppy. My apologies for this, it was late!In relation to the title, the term 'law enforcement agency', is, I believe not relevant to the the UK and highly americanised. If we must use 'law enforcement' then I believe the title should read law enforcement 'organisations' as the term 'agency' has certain legal definitions which does not fit police forces in the UK. The vast majority of law enforcement (in terms of criminal law) is and will, for the forseeable future, be carried out by the police forces. I would agree that organisations such as SOCA, UKBA should be in the article, however HSE, RAIB and Fisheries Protection is stretching the point me thinks. I will attempt to re-write the first paragraph of the article to better reflect this both in terms of the practical and legal situation when I have a moment. Regards Dibble999 (talk) 14:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Apologies on my part, I was somewhat complacent. When I went to edit the LEOs I saw exactly what you meant! Yes, the bodies with investigatory powers don't really deserve to be here... but i don't know where else they could go? ninety:one 14:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ports police
I am recommending the stub articles listed in this section be redirected here. Port of Bristol Police and Port of Dover Police are not stubs and are not affected by this proposed merger. Larne Harbour Police is under AfD (discuss), I will be proposing a merger here as a possible resolution to the AfD. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  22:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Update: I have proposed a merger to here on the AfD discussion page for Larne Harbor Police. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  22:54, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I support the inclusion of this data in a list format but can't see an argument for deleting what are perfectly valid stubs. The material should also appear in the article on the associated port. This would allow more detail than a list format and retention of appropiate images. Euryalus (talk) 22:44, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The concern is one of notability of the police forces in question. See the Larne AfD discussion for background.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  22:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The merger proposal has no consensus, will remove tags from articles. ninety:one 22:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Fictional police forces
Should Toytown Police be included, Mr. Plod has after all passed into the English language as a name for a police officer?

Proposed merger from List of police forces in Wales sorted by region
This list (List of police forces in Wales sorted by region) is entirely redundant. Drseuk has just taken the first part of the name of each police force and specified it as the relevant "region". Needless to say each "region" only contains one police force, so it provides no useful information at all. Furthermore, these "regions" aren't generally recognised as regions in any other sense, so what exactly is the purpose of this article? Owain (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Couldn't agree more. This has to be a contender for the prize of Most useless page on Wikipedia. Skinsmoke (talk) 16:12, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I completely agree, this page provides no useless information other than two or three forces, and yet it's not a disambiguation page. Mr.TrustWorthy Got Something to Tell Me? 18:27, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

National Police Air Service
The National Police Air Service should probably be added to the article but I've no idea in which section it should be added. --Thefrood (talk) 00:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Fictional police forces - move to a separate page?
Fictional lists are usually in separate pages - this should probably be a section of List of fictional institutions or maybe split to a new page. Peter&#160;James (talk) 11:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Major clean up
I have edited this article a lot, attempting to update the information and improve accuracy. A lot has been restructured, mainly to improve accuracy, however if you feel any of my edits were incorrect please manually change that specifically to avoid reverting other, accurate changes. Regards, Rob (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Overseas territories
Although Crown Dependencies, and Overseas territories are not part of the UK per say they do have British nationality and citizenship according to their respective articles and a British citizenship act passed in 1981. They are technically British; so it could be helpful to list them in this article. Overseas territories aren't technically part of the UK proper either.

I could suggest as an alternative to listing both territories and dependencies in the article that a separate article that lists Crown Dependency and Overseas territories police forces be created separately and just linked to the current list of UK police agencies in a see also section.

Mrld (talk) 23:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm okay with creating a new article or leaving them here, however my preference would be to simply remove the Crown Dependencies as they are listed at List of law enforcement agencies and politically are not territories of the UK, therefore in my opinion are not related enough to be covered in an article about the UK's agencies, or the UK's territories agencies. Regards, Rob (talk) 23:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Legal basis and article structure
Much of this article is structured by legal basis. I don't think this is exactly helpful to readers. Instead, simply stating what kind of unit/force they are might be more useful. I don't think the fact that the British Transport Police is defined in legislation as a "Special police force" is really relevant. And contrasting it with other national units/forces such as the National Domestic Extremism Unit, based on being defined differently in law seems pointless. I recommend, for the special police units, we have a summary paragraph, stating what they are, and the different kind of laws they may be defined under, then just list them all in one list. Similarly, other sections could do with restructuring based on the same principles. Rob (talk | contribs) 14:50, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Accept scope of article and move to 'List of British law enforcement agencies'?
Law enforcement agencies in British dependent territories are 'British law enforcement agencies', but not 'law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom'. We could properly expand the scope of the article to include these agencies, but it would require moving the article to 'List of British law enforcement agencies', and a little rewording. Thoughts? Rob (talk &#124; contribs) 15:25, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Definitions
I would suggest you need to clarify what is meant by 'limited executive powers' and 'purely investigatory'. E.g. Environmental Health and Trading Standards Officers in Local Authorities have powers of entry to business premises without a warrant; powers to seize goods and documents; and, in the EH case, powers to order premises to cease trading temporarily. Both take prosecutions through the local Council without involving the Police or Crown Prosecution Service, up to and including fraud cases 82.26.204.231 (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Article move to Law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom
This is article is more than a list, and by it nature this topic needs a full article to cover it properly, so I propose moving this page to Law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom, which is currently a redirect to this page. Any comments from other editors on this move are requested. Whizz40 (talk) 06:27, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. There are also lists for each jurisdiction:
 * List of law enforcement agencies in England and Wales
 * List of law enforcement agencies in Scotland
 * List of law enforcement agencies in Northern Ireland
 * We could possibly disambiguate "List of law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom", listing this article along with those three.
 * Rob984 (talk) 17:33, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Makes sense, although there seem to be an extremely large number of articles which link to List of law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure why this is (perhaps a hidden template?), but given this a straight move might be preferable to maintain the direct link, with the three lists above as See also links? A hatnote might help as well. Whizz40 (talk) 06:44, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Since this article would likely be the primary topic, I'll go ahead with the move if there is support for this (or no objections). Whizz40 (talk) 13:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * An alternative view is this article has some list-like characteristics that make it better to leave under the current article title which could also help avoid confusion or too much overlap with the main article on Law enforcement in the United Kingdom? Whizz40 (talk) 13:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Reading from the top of the Talk page, I see this question has been discussed before. From the discussions and the article title still being List of... I think the consensus, even if implicit, is for the status quo. So I'll leave the article title alone. Whizz40 (talk) 15:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

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On the streets of Britain, the Jews have their own uniformed and patrol car-ed police force and paramilitaries
Literally a law unto themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:490:A600:1DED:3C54:7DF3:9B88 (talk) 20:14, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. The Shomrim (neighborhood watch group) article you refer to makes clear that they are a neighbourhood watch group, and neither a police force nor "paramilitaries." They also do not have police powers, for example the power to make arrests. This List is about law enforcement agencies, not neighbourhood watch groups or civilian patrols. -- Euryalus (talk) 13:09, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

You are a liar. Even the 'real British police' are unhappy with these uniformed racial Jews-only paramilitary Shorim police force in Britain. Also note the 'Shorim' police car in full official Metropolitan Police colours, but with the word: SHORIM over POLICE...http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/crime-court/we_look_nothing_like_police_says_leader_from_golders_green_s_shomrim_response_team_1_4197572 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:490:A600:6146:174B:F9BD:AA2C (talk) 15:30, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Article needs link to the wiki page on these Jews-only quasi police forces operating in the UK and USA
The title of the wiki page is willfully misleading, these so-called 'neighborhood watch group'. - in Britain, notwithstanding their Jewish headwear, strut about in full police-force uniform and are armed with full police force weaponry and drive about in police cars in fill police livery. Anyway, like I said, this article needs to link to wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shomrim_(neighborhood_watch_group) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:490:A600:49E3:6AAA:8A8E:A08A (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Not a police force. See section above. -- Euryalus (talk) 13:11, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

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The evergrowing list of Fictional Police Forces
I note that at the bottom of the article there is developing a huge (and growing) list of fictional police forces that have been portrayed in TV, Film and other productions. I'm not really sure that this article is the best place for this list of made up forces. The article is about actual police forces in the United Kingdom along with some detail about juridiction and remit etc. I don't believe this article is the place for a list of fictional forces. My suggestion is to remove the list and if someone wants to create a new article about these fictional forces they are more than welcome but I really don't see the encyclopedic benefit - they don't exist etc - they can be added to the individual film or TV production article if required. Just seems a bizzarre list added to the bottom of this aticle. Thoughts anyone? Bowchaser (talk) 09:10, 8 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Agree. It's also unsourced and has large quantities of original research, detailing what the fictional police forces might be, had they been real police forces in the same area. If there's an encyclopaedic need for a "List of fictional police forces in the United Kingdom" then this material can be transferred there with the appropriate attribution. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:49, 8 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Seems there is no disagreement after 2 days since my query. I shall remove the list for the reasons outlined above by myself and Euryalus.  If somebody disagrees after deletion, can we discuss here.  Thanks Bowchaser (talk) 14:43, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

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