Humberside Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing The East Riding of Yorkshire including Hull and northern parts of Lincolnshire including Grimsby and Scunthorpe.
Following the abolition of Humberside in 1996, the local council members of the Police Authority were appointed by a joint committee of the councils of the East Riding of Yorkshire, Kingston upon Hull, North Lincolnshire, and North East Lincolnshire. On 21 November 2012, the Police Authority was made redundant by the election of the Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). The authority, at the time it ceased to exist, had 17 members in total; nine Local Authority Elected members from the area's four unitary authorities and eight independent members.[6]
From March 2013 to February 2017, the chief constable of Humberside Police was Justine Curran, previously chief constable of Tayside Police in Scotland before the introduction of the national Police Scotland service on 1 April 2013. Her appointment was unanimously approved by the Humberside Police and Crime panel after PCC Matthew Grove, proposed her for the post.[10] Curran took over the position from Tim Hollis, who retired from the service in March 2013.
On 11 November 2015, it was revealed that Curran had claimed for more than £39,000 in expenses for her relocation from Tayside to Humberside in March 2013.[11]
After Keith Hunter was elected as PCC in May 2016, Curran was given six months to improve the force after it was rated inadequate by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC). Nine months later, after a further HMIC inspection which identified further "significant failings", Hunter asked Curran to consider her position, and she announced her retirement.[12] She left on 20 February 2017, 18 months before she had been due to retire.[13]
In August 2017, it was revealed that Hunter had "lost confidence" in Curran and was "completely undermined" by her when it was decided to withhold the findings of an HMIC investigation which revealed further inadequacies within the force. Hunter sought legal advice, and Curran was allowed to retire before the statutory procedure to remove a chief constable was started.[12]
Lee Freeman, a former assistant chief constable in Lincolnshire from August 2013 who had joined Humberside in May 2015, took over as deputy chief constable on Curran's departure. He was appointed temporary chief constable in May 2017 and the position was made permanent on 26 June 2017.[14]
Freeman implemented a callout system named 'Right Care, Right Person' (RCRP) in May 2020, in which Humberside officers would only attend mental health-related callouts deemed 'essential' and instead have other callouts responded to by medical services. As of May 2023, Freeman claims that Humberside has achieved more arrests per 1,000 people in the population under RCRP while still attending 25% of mental health callouts, with officers having attended 508 fewer callouts per month. RCRP is planned to be copied by the Metropolitan Police and other police forces in England and Wales.[15]
In August 2023 Paul Anderson, previously the Assistant Chief Constable under Freeman, took over as Chief Constable of Humberside Police.
The Police Roll of Honour Trust and Police Memorial Trust list and commemorate all British police officers killed in the line of duty. Since its establishment in 1984, the Police Memorial Trust has erected 50 memorials nationally to some of those officers.
Since the formation of Humberside Police six officers have been killed in the line of duty, these officers are:[16][17]
September 1979 – Police Constable, Linton Andee Le Blanc, 19, killed when his patrol car crashed on Hedon Road in Kingston upon Hull while responding to a burglar alarm call[18]
January 1998 – Police Constable Steven Stimpson, 33, accidentally killed when his Volvo T5 traffic patrol car left the A1035 road near Tickton and overturned[19][20]
August 1998 – Police Constable James Heaton, 30, fatally injured when his Volvo T5 traffic car left the A1079 road near Beverley and overturned while responding to an accident[19][21]
September 1998 – Police Constable Jonathan Templeton, 37, collapsed and died of heart failure whilst on duty at Hedon police station[22]
July 2003 – Police Constable Robert Douglas, 44, killed in a road traffic accident returning from his duties at the airport
April 2015 – Police Constable Russell Wylie, 28, during the morning of Monday 13 April 2015 he was on routine motorcycle patrol when he was involved in a collision with a car on the B1362, Burstwick, East Riding of Yorkshire. He was airlifted to Hull Royal Infirmary, however his injuries proved to be fatal. He was a traffic officer based at Melton.[23]
Notable major incidents and investigations in which Humberside Police have been involved in include:
July 2010: Northumbria Police manhunt: Humberside Police was involved in the major police manhunt for Raoul Moat who, upon release from prison, shot his ex-girlfriend's new partner, his ex-girlfriend and the then serving traffic police Officer, PC David Rathband. Humberside Police, along with other police forces, provided mutual aid to Northumbria Police by providing armed police officer to assist in the armed police coverage and search for Raoul Moat.[24]
August 2011: 2011 England Riots: Specially trained officers were sent to assist the Metropolitan Police as riots broke out across the London area, which later spread across the country. under the command of ACC Stuart Donald, who was the senior force Chief officer, responsible for the deployment and co-ordination of operations in relation to the riots. Over 50 officers travelled to London to assist the Met Police.[25]
February 2019: Disappearance of Libby Squire: On 1 February 2019, Humberside police launched a major search for missing Hull University student Libby Squire. Appeals were made on social media and a large police presence was focused around the Beverley Road area of Hull. Humberside Police arrested a man on suspicion of abduction a few days later and charged him with several unrelated offences. He was released under investigation in connection to Libby Squire. Seven weeks later, the body of Libby Squire was discovered in the Humber Estuary, over 30 miles from her last known location in Hull.[26] On 24 October 2019, police charged 25 year old Pawel Relowicz for the rape and murder of Libby Squire.[27] On 10 February 2021, Pawel Relowicz was found guilty of rape and murder.[28]
Notable incidents and investigations involving Humberside officers include:
In mid-2004, the force refused to dismiss Chief Constable David Westwood despite instructions from the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett.[32] The Home Secretary eventually obtained a court order suspending Westwood.[33] The force had come under pressure to dismiss Westwood when the Soham Inquiry apportioned part of the blame to Humberside Police for not properly informing the authorities of Grimsby-born Ian Huntley, who was known to Humberside Police and local social services, after reports of nine sexual offences of which Huntley had been suspected, and also an alleged burglary. In only one of the sex offence investigations was Huntley charged (with rape) and remanded in custody, but the case was dropped due to insufficient evidence, and his burglary case was left on file. Huntley was not convicted of any crime (his only actual conviction was for a minor motoring offence in 1993), and Humberside Police did not adequately inform the authorities in Cambridgeshire about Huntley when he moved to Soham to work as a school caretaker. He was found guilty of murdering two 10-year-old girls (Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman) in 2003. This led to the Bichard enquiry for the police force and the Kelly report for the local council (North East Lincolnshire Council).[34][35]
In 2005, Colin Inglis, its chairman at the time of the previous crisis, appeared in court charged with indecent assaults against children dating back to the 1980s.[36][37] Inglis was cleared of all charges in July 2006.[38]
In January 2015, former Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Andrews was convicted of common assault, harassment, stalking, and witness intimidation.[39] Court testimony revealed that other senior officers in Humberside Police questioned whether an investigation into Andrews' conduct should have gone ahead, concerned by "the 'dirt' he might throw" and the damage caused to the force's reputation.[40] One victim, a police inspector, expressed fear of a Goole-based "mafia" of senior officers that included Andrews.[41]
In November 2015, a sergeant with 27 years' service was dismissed after kicking a 16-year-old boy in the head following a chase. Sergeant John Stevenson was involved in one of the most high-profile cases in Humberside Police's recent history when he arrested his own boss, Colin Andrews, who was found guilty of stalking, harassment and assault in January.[42] Many speculated that the sergeant was used as a scapegoat.[43]
Former police officer, Harry Miller, was questioned over the telephone in January 2019 by a Humberside Police constable for 34 minutes after being reported for a non-crime "hate incident" for liking and making Twitter posts that were considered transphobic.[44] The High Court ruled in 2020 that the questioning was unlawful and represented a "disproportionate interference" with Miller's right to freedom of expression.[45]
Former constable Daniel Whitehead, who resigned from the force in January, was found guilty of gross misconduct at a Humberside Police Misconduct Board hearing in February 2023 at Goole Magistrates Court and was permanently barred nationwide from working for the police. Whitehead had posted content considered inappropriate, grossly offensive and sexually explicit on social media profiles that identified him as a Humberside police officer between September 2021 and March 2022, despite being repeatedly told to stop doing so by his supervisors, and an internal investigation by Humberside Police was triggered when he disclosed his personal information to colleagues and showed them a picture of a naked man on his phone around September or October 2022.[46]
Humberside Police has two custody suites in Hull and Grimsby that operate 24/7 and hold prisoners who have been arrested by officers in the force. A 40-cell custody suite is located at Clough Road police station in Hull, opened in 2013 as part of a £32 million replacement for the Queens Gardens police station in the city centre,[47][48] while prisoners on the south bank of the Humber are held in a £14million 36-cell custody suite at Birchin Way in Grimsby, which opened in March 2019 to replace custody suites in Grimsby and Scunthorpe. The Birchin Way custody suite includes a secure holding bay for arriving prisoners, CCTV monitoring throughout, on-site medical facilities and a special 'orange' holding cell for vulnerable prisoners.[49]
Humberside uses a wide variety of vehicles, including both marked and unmarked police vehicles.[specify] The force is one of many police forces across the United Kingdom to merge its maintenance operations with the area fire service, forming Emergency Services Fleet Management (Humberside) in partnership with the Humberside Fire and Rescue Service in 2015. Joint maintenance operations are based at a single workshop in Melton.[50]
In September 1994, in response to a rise in vehicle crime within the force's operating area, especially concentrated in Hull, Humberside Police founded the Vehicle Crime Unit. The unit was initially formed with six traffic officers as well as the dogs of the force's Dog Section, and made use of a modified Ford Escort RS Cosworth equipped with an in-car video camera as well as a converted Vauxhall Senator dog carrier for traffic pursuits.[51][52] The Escort Cosworth, as well as a Volvo 850 T5, were both replaced by two Subaru Impreza Turbos in June 1998,[53] while the Senator was replaced by a Vauxhall Omega around the same period.[54]
Throughout the 2000s, Humberside Police standardised on the Volvo V70 for their traffic fleet, as well as in other force operations.[55] High-performance traffic vehicles acquired for the force's Road Crime Unit in this period included three Subaru Imprezas,[56] a pair of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X and a Lexus IS-F.[57][58]
From 1997 until the early 2010s, Humberside Police operated a majority of its fleet vehicles on liquefied petroleum gas fuel, with some supplied as bi-fuel vehicles, in order to cut costs on fuelling the fleet.[59] The first fleet vehicles supplied with LPG fuel were two converted Vauxhall Astras, supplied in March 1997 as part of a three-year trial in a partnership between Calor Gas, the Energy Saving Trust and Vauxhall Motors.[60] A majority of vehicles later supplied with LPG fuelling systems included the Proton Persona and the later Proton Impian and GEN•2, most for use as general purpose fleet vehicles.[61][62]
Humberside Police first acquired a police helicopter in August 1996, purchasing a used Eurocopter BO 105 from the Norwegian Air Ambulance Service. The helicopter, later codenamed Oscar 99, was equipped with a thermal image camera and conventional video camera, a radio system giving access to emergency service frequencies, and as part of its previous air ambulance use, a stretcher for hospital patient transport.[63] Oscar 99 became operational from its base at RAF Leconfield on 26 December 1996, first used to help locate a care home resident reported missing from an Appleby care home.[64]
Humberside's helicopter operations would be taken over by the National Police Air Service (NPAS) on 27 September 2016,[66] making the force the last in England and Wales to operate its own helicopter independently.[67][68]Humberside Police and Crime CommissionerMatthew Grove was initially reluctant to hand over Oscar 99 to NPAS after the service had proposed cutting ten of its helicopter bases, stating in September 2015 that while the force would work towards joining NPAS the following September, NPAS must both provide "satisfactory" air cover for residents of the Humberside area and be "appropriate and affordable" for the taxpayer as a replacement for Oscar 99.[68] An agreement for Humberside to join NPAS would eventually be signed in May 2016;[69] police air cover in the Humberside area is now provided through fixed-wing Vulcanair P-68C aircraft based at Leeds Bradford Airport.[70][71]
Until 2013, Humberside Police maintained a mounted police unit latterly consisting of six horses based at stables in Walkington. The mounted section was disbanded in July 2013 in order to save £500,000 per year amid budget cuts to the force, with the unit reported to have been deployed only 27 times during 2012.[72] Five of the six horses were sold to other police forces in the United Kingdom following the unit's disbandment,[73] and the Walkington stables were later sold to a private buyer in August 2015.[74]
The force underperformed for a number of years. In October 2006 it was named as the worst-performing police force in the country (jointly with Northamptonshire Police), based on data released from the Home Office[75][76]
In 2007 the force moved off the bottom of the unofficial league table thanks to "major improvements" in performance, according to the Home Office.[77]
Performance continued to improve, with a 20% reduction in total recorded crime as at March 2009. Recorded vehicle crime was down 39%, domestic burglary was down 12%, and robbery was down 36%. Home Office figures published in July 2009 showed that from 2007/08 to 2008/09, Humberside Police had the second highest increase of all forces in England and Wales in the percentage of British Crime Survey respondents who said that their local police do an excellent or good job.
After inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) between April and August 2009, their report identified Humberside Police as one of the top eight forces in the country.
In April 2009 the force was cited as the poorest performing force for completing Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks. The Home Office requirement is for 95% of requests to be completed within 14 days; Humberside Police completed just 15%. As such checks are often a condition of employment, this failure caused delays for those waiting to start work.[78]
Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, said he was disgusted with this failure. He said, "The delay in processing them stops people taking up work and has a crippling impact on voluntary groups who have to get their volunteers approved. The Humberside Police are seriously lagging behind virtually every other constabulary in the country and local people are being let down."[79]
In October 2015, it was revealed that officer morale in the force was the lowest in the country, with 84.5% of officers saying that their morale was currently low, compared to 70.2% nationally.[80]
On 19 October 2015, in a report published by HMIC, Humberside Police was the only force in the country classed as inadequate. The report suggested that the force had a "limited understanding" of demand for its services, and raised "serious concerns" over the way it was organised. HM Inspector of Constabulary Mike Cunningham said: "Humberside Police has a limited understanding of the current and future demand for its services and, as it is unable to fully match resources to demand in some important areas, this affects its ability to provide a good service to the public." Chief Constable Justine Curran said the force had "moved on" since then.[81]
Similarly, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) released its annual statistics of police complaints from forces throughout the country: Humberside Police performed better than average in many areas; e.g. the number of complaints had decreased by 4% compared to an increase of 6% nationally. But the number of appeals by dissatisfied complainants had increased by 24%: three times the national average.[82]
In November 2015, it was revealed that thousands of telephone calls to the 101 service were being abandoned; the problem had reached its peak in June 2015 when over 11,000 calls were abandoned.[83]
On 19 November 2015 the East Riding of Yorkshire Council agreed to reconvene a panel to review the force after October's HMIC inspection. The panel ended up criticising both police and crime commissioner Matthew Grove and chief constableJustine Curran for refusing to attend one of its meetings. This had led the council to write a critical letter to the parliamentary committee for standards in public life, highlighting concerns over a lack of proper consultation over the reorganisation[what reorganisation?]. Speaking at the full council meeting, Cllr. Owen said the panel's concerns had been vindicated by the HMIC report. He said "all public sector bodies are facing huge financial pressures and I fully appreciate the pressures we all face, and Humberside Police are no different, recovering from a number of years of having to improve performance in a climate of low funding and other pressures.[84]
In June 2018, 12 months after Curran's departure, Humberside Police were formally disengaged[clarification needed] by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and assessed as sufficiently improved and stable to be removed from what were in effect "special measures"
In August 2018, in the annual Police Federation Pay and Morale Survey, Humberside were officially recorded as the most improved police force in the country in terms of police officers' reported levels of personal morale. The survey placed the force 3rd out of 43 forces across England and Wales; the previous year the results were reported locally as Humberside having the lowest morale in the country.
His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) conducts a periodic police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy (PEEL) inspection of each police service's performance. In November 2022, the force was awarded six outstanding and two good grades in its PEEL inspection, the best in the UK at that time.[85]
It was rated as follows:[86]
Humberside Police participated in a documentary series named The Lock Up, where cameras followed Police and Custody officers in their work at the Custody Suite at Humberside Police Headquarters on Priory Road, Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire.
The documentary has had 2 series, the first aired on BBC Three which started showing on 4 February 2011[89] consisting of 8 episodes where cameras rolled 24/7; the second series was aired primarily on the main BBC Channel, BBC One.
Humberside Police have also participated in the second series of Neighbourhood Blues, that covered the work of the forces Neighbourhood Policing Teams. This was aired on weekday mornings for two weeks starting on 12 November 2012, on BBC One.[90]
Humberside Police participated in the ITV documentary series Hotel Custody, which in three episodes, from 28 August 2022, covered the operation of the Birchen Way custody facility in Grimsby, aiming to show the facility's method of treating remanded detainees as "customers rather than criminals".[91]
^"High-speed cops hunt criminals". Hull Daily Mail. 5 June 2006. p. 1. ProQuest333558859. Officers working in a pack are using three Subaru Impreza and three Volvo V70 cars to box in suspects and swoop on their prey.
^Joyce, Tyron. "National Police Air Service Annual Report 2016/17"(PDF). National Police Air Service. p. 4. Retrieved 31 July 2023. Humberside Police joining NPAS on 27 September 2016 marked the end of the development phase ('stage one') of NPAS and the full formation of the NPAS Collaboration, which is funded by the police forces of England and Wales.
