County Police Forces in The UK
The County Police Act 1839 gave the counties of England and Wales the opportunity to establish full-time police forces, headed by a chief constable who was appointed by the justices of the peace of the county. The first county to implement this was Wiltshire Constabulary, which appointed Captain Samuel Meredith RN its first chief constable on 28 November 1839. Other counties followed this pattern; for instance, Essex appointed its first chief constable on 11 February 1840.
The first woman to hold the rank was Pauline Clare, appointed Chief Constable of the Lancashire Constabulary on 14 June 1995.
The salaries of chief constables vary from force to force, primarily on the basis of the population of their force's territory, but the amounts are fixed centrally. From 1 September 2010, the highest paid is the chief constable of Northern Ireland, on £193,548, in recognition of the unique security challenges and political sensitivity of that office. Other salaries range from £181,455 in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, down to £127,017. The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and his deputy are paid significantly more than any chief constable, partly because the Metropolitan Police has national anti-terrorism and security duties that overlap with other local forces. As of 2011 the commissioner earns an annual salary of £260,088, whilst his deputy earns £214,722.
Read more about this topic: Chief Constable
Famous quotes containing the words county, police and/or forces:
“In the county there are thirty-seven churches
and no butcher shop. This could be taken
as a matter of all form and no content.”
—Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)
“There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,—now under one disguise, now under another,—like a police in citizen’s clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)