User talk:Bowchaser

Epping Forest Keepers & extension of Met jurisdiction
Hopefully I will be able to check the original text this week. However, I have searched the Statue Law Database for any mention of "Epping Forest Act" and it only mentions older ones that have been repealed. So unless the relevant section (section 45) was repealed by a private/local Act at some point, it is highly likely to still read the same. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 22:59, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Suggesting that that is possibly the case would constitute original research, would not be the case without a court ruling, and is totally and utterly by the by. It is a matter of fact that every place in the United Kingdom is in a police area, and also that the jurisdiction of the Met/Essex was specifically extended at a time when police areas did not exist. There also exists a power, having again referred to my notes, to charge for the service they provide. That I will include when I am able to check the exact text asap. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 22:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Suggesting that the provisions of the 1878 Act have been overruled, repealed or similar is what I was referring to as having the potential to be OR, because that is the part of the text whose removal I was contending. The extension provision is real and alive though somewhat useless, but the charging provision is both real and potentially useful. Either way, I'm not going to add anything in again until I get the text verbatim. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 18:46, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, according to my notes, it was the Met and Essex that could charge the Conservators! ninety:one (reply on my talk) 21:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Found the original text, from section 45: (1) "The powers and duties of the metropolitan police and of the police of the county of Essex in relation to public safety and preservation of order and protection of property shall extend to the Forest." (2) "Nothing in this Act shall exted the power of levying police rates to any person or property to which he same would not have been extended if this Act has not been passed." (3) stated that the conservators could pay the Met and Essex for their services. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 23:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Protection Command
Sorry - I thought it was clear from the reference to Met officers in the first sentence, but it doesn't hurt to be clear! By the way, I got initial replies back from Cumbria and the CNC about the whole S59 Energy Act thing in relation to the Bird shootings - they're still deciding on some of the information but there's nothing useful in what has been released so far. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 15:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

CoLP Commissioner
I'm almost certain he is a JP - the Met Commissioner ceased to be one in 1971 by the Administration of Justice Act (section 10, Sch. 1) but no mention was made of the CoLP Commissioner. Will try to check this out soon. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 23:43, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The only place in the country you can get the Act is in London, and I won't be able to get there until Easter! However, the Justices of the Peace Act 1968 (s1) effectively abolished the old offices of JP, and made special exception for the Met Commissioner, so I think it can be fairly safely said that the CoLP COmmissioner, if he ever was one, is a JP no longer. ninety:one (reply on my talk) 01:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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October 2018
Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See BRD for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you don't violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Drmies (talk) 20:29, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Copying licensed material requires attribution
Hi. I see in a recent addition to Crown Prosecution Service you included material from a webpage that is available under an Open Government Licence. That's okay, but you have to give attribution so that our readers are made aware that you copied the prose rather than wrote it yourself. I've added the attribution for this particular instance. Please make sure that you follow this licensing requirement when copying from compatibly-licensed material in the future. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:10, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Met Police Org Structure
Hi there, thanks for your edit. Where does the Flying Squad fit in the overall Met Police structure? I have noticed that some squads are missing such as Trident and Flying Squad but very scant information available online. Thanks. CityPride (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, what was known as the Flying Squad is part of Specialist Crime, which as you can see from this chart (https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/about-us/executive-structure.pdf) sits under Frontline Policing. There has been lots of recent changes and the Trident and Flying squad units are not as easy to define as per before...Bowchaser (talk) 12:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, based on the page Serious and Organised Crime Command, which Flying Squad was a part of, it says that the entire Serious and Organised Crime Command now sits under Met Operations (MO7). Again, cannot find external sources to confirm this as the restructure seems to be a mess... the Met Police template Template:Metropolitan_Police is badly out of date too.CityPride (talk) 13:26, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That page is also wrong. Most of those units mentioned on that page sit under DAC Graham McNulty, CmdrAlex Murray, CmdrDavid McLaren as per the chart I've linked in my first reply.  Obviously, you'll just have to take my word for it at the moment (or not!) as you are quite right, the publically available documents are out of date and I agree it is a bit of a mess! I'll have a dig around for some publically available documents to see if I can assit in verification and accuracy of these Met structure pages. Bowchaser (talk) 09:59, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Awesome. I'll take your word for it - it's quite a mess and I've done some brief digging to no avail. When I have more time I'll try to assist in clean up as well, but for now I'll wait for you and some good Wikipedians to update these pages. Thanks for your help! I blame the Met for not making the new changes more transparent. I see even news reports from BBC / Sky use outdated terminology, and they are quite inconsistent across different media outlets. CityPride (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

City of London Police
Please provide a citation for the assertion "In law, there is no equivalency to regular police ranks." That is not something the Act says: it is simply your interpretation of the Act (and therefore not suitable for inclusion), unless you can cite it to a reliable source. Proteus (Talk) 19:45, 1 June 2021 (UTC)


 * A regular police officer in the 1996 Act is defined as a "member of a police force" if you look at sections 9H through to 13. Section 50 of the act is a list of regulations that the Secretary of State can put in place for police forces.  Subsection 2 of section 50 states "(a)the ranks to be held by members of police forces".  I.e regulations to prescribe the ranks to be held by regular officers.
 * Within the Act special constables are defined as special constables as per section 27 - for the purposes of the Act special constables are not members of a police force but special constables. This can clearly be seen in the way the legislation is written in relation to attestation and jurisdiction, sections 29 and 30.  Under both these sections "members of police forces" and special constables are specifically listed as different entities.  If you know your police history you will know that section 30 was amended for special constables in the early part of this century as they used to have a more limited legal jurisdiction - the ammendment brought special constables jurisdiction into line with regulars (members of a police force) i.e. throughout England & Wales and its territorial waters.
 * This difference as is further shown in that the regulations for special constables is not part of section 50 (which is for regulars - members of a police force) but instead their regulations are found under section 51. If you look at the list under section 51 there is no provision (in law) for ranks for special constables.
 * So legally there is no provision for a rank or grade system for special constables. That is partly why different forces have different ranks systems across the country, from some mirroring regular ranks through to no ranks or grade system at all and everything inbetween.  And it is widely and commonly accepted within policing (and can be seen operationally) by the rather obvious fact that special constables cannot be afforded the powers granted to higher regular ranks in relation to custody sergeants (in relation to detention etc), Inspectors (search sec 18, section 60) and so on.  This is because there is no basis (in law) for a special constable to be a "sergeant" etc in the regular sense.  Numerous police force policies explain how the rank or grade system of their special constabulary is an internal admin system for the constabulary only - not a rank system on the same basis as regulars.
 * This is not original research. I am just stating what the Act says.  There is no rank system in law for special constables set out in the 1996 Act hence no equivalency to regular ranks.  If you can cite anything which calls this into question, please do cite as it would be something I have never heard of and would be ground breaking in terms of operational policing and I would be very interested.  Bowchaser (talk) 15:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Interested in your feedback
Given your stand on things like trivial lists of vehicles in police articles, I wondered if you had an opinion on the same thing in Fire & Rescue articles. Over the past few months I have cleaned up nearly all of the UK F&R articles (see my user page). Mostly I have deleted long lists of fire stations and the individual vehicles posted to each and every one. Occasionally an editor pops up who objects and rather than get into an unhelpful 1:1 edit war, it would be useful to have someone else add weight to the discussion (either way). I just reverted a big add of such trivia at Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service then immediately initiated a discussion at Talk:Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service. If it's of interest then take a look at the history of the article and the talk page discussion. 10mmsocket (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

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IOPC - Apologies
Apologies - you are correct. Sweet6970 (talk) 14:05, 4 December 2022 (UTC)


 * No worries Bowchaser (talk) 15:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

West Midlands Police
Nice catch on the infobox. Any objections if I go update the rest of the England & Wales police force infoboxes? Or you could of course check them yourself! 10mmsocket (talk) 09:28, 4 January 2023 (UTC)


 * No worries, crack on. I looked at one or two other forces at random and they seemed correct but feel free to correct any that are incorrect Bowchaser (talk) 10:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Will do, thank you. 10mmsocket (talk) 12:54, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Law enforcement in the United Kingdom
Hi. I've commented on Talk:Law enforcement in the United Kingdom but various MPs are recorded in Hansard as stating Chinese police overseas service stations are operating in the UK, albeit without jurisdiction. Darrelljon (talk) 11:09, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Port Police (edit to Dorset Police)
Hi, regarding my removal of the phrase "The Ports Policing Unit is responsible for policing all ports in Dorset including Poole Harbour, Swanage Harbour, Portland Harbour, Weymouth Harbour, Christchurch Harbour and Bournemouth Airport.". You reverted my edit as "This will need a source. Even if there is a port police force, the territorial force for the police area (Dorset in this case) are still legally responsible for for law and order throughout police area as per Police Act 1996.".

I must respectfully disagree - the initial phrase is completely unsourced. The phrase "The Ports Policing Unit is responsible for policing all ports in Dorset including Poole Harbour, Swanage Harbour, Portland Harbour, Weymouth Harbour, Christchurch Harbour and Bournemouth Airport." surely needs sourcing instead? Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (Message me) 18:02, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I have added a couple of cites, however the basic point I am making still stands. Each part of England & Wales is covered by a particular territorial police area as per the Police Act 1996.  It doesn't matter if there is a specialist port constabulary covering a particular port, the territorial police force of the police area the port sits within is ultimately responsible for law and order throughout its police area even if there is a particular specialist port force there.  So your initial edit is incorrect, Dorset Police is ultimately responsible for Portland Port even though they will gratefully accept assistance from the very small Portland Port Police. Bowchaser (talk) 20:43, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

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