Stations
In addition to the headquarters at New Scotland Yard, there are 140 police stations in London. These range from large borough headquarters staffed around the clock every day to smaller stations which may be open to the public only during normal business hours, or on certain days of the week.
Most police stations can easily be identified from one or more blue lamps located outside the entrance, which were introduced in 1861.
The oldest police station, which opened in Bow Street in 1881, closed in 1992 and the adjoining Bow Street Magistrates' Court heard its last case on 14 July 2006. The oldest operational police station is in Wapping, and opened in 1908. It is the headquarters of the Marine Policing Unit (formerly known as Thames Division), which is responsible for policing the River Thames. It also houses a mortuary and the River Police Museum.
Paddington Green Police Station is an MPS station that has received much publicity for its housing of terrorism suspects in an underground complex.
MPS stations may house a variety of roles and ranks of police staff, such as:
- Uniformed police officers and Special Constables who are responsible for attending emergency calls;
- Uniformed police officers and Special Constables who make up a "safer neighbourhood team", policing a specific area;
- Police Community Support Officers responsible for a general presence in the community mostly by foot and assisting in policing duties;
- MPS-employed traffic wardens who enforce parking regulations;
- Non-police Crime Reduction Officers who are responsible for attending public functions with advice, visiting households, and handing out items such as personal alarms;
- Non-police Firearms Enquiry Officers responsible for issuing firearms certificates and related duties;
- Non-police Station Reception Officer or Station PCSO who are responsible for interaction with members of the public who enter the front office of the station, along with general administration;
- Non-police fingerprinting and identification staff who are responsible for maintaining criminal identity archives;
- Police cadets assisting police officers, PCSOs or other police staff in non-confrontational duties; and
- CID detectives concerned with criminal investigations.
Most stations have temporary holding cells where an arrested person can be held until either being released without charge, bailed to appear at court on a later date, or remanded until escort to a court.
In 2004 there was a call from the Institute for Public Policy Research for more imaginative planning of police stations to aid in improving relations between police forces and the wider community.
Read more about this topic: Metropolitan Police Service
Famous quotes containing the word stations:
“After I was married a year I remembered things like radio stations and forgot my husband.”
—P. J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston (1899–1954)
“I can’t quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world’s problems.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)