Volunteer police officers help tackle crime in #OpGalaxy

Message from Humberside Police:-

Volunteers’ Week 2020

As Operation Galaxy continues to target criminals and make our area a hostile and difficult place for criminals to operate in, we thought we’d share a bit more about some of the different officers that are involved.

The operation brings together officers and staff of all ranks and roles, working together to tackle crime, but did you know that this also includes some that do it on a completely voluntary basis?

We’re talking about our fantastic Special Constabulary of course, men and women who volunteer as police officers in their spare time, helping to keep our communities safe.

Special officers have all the same powers as a police officer, wear all the same uniform and carry the same kit… the only difference is they are volunteers.

They can move up the ranks, in the same way an officer might, and they can also specialise – working for a variety of different teams across the force.

We have special officers embedded in our community policing teams, policing the highways with our roads policing unit, tackling crime with our proactive teams and carrying out investigations in the region’s waterways with our underwater search team.

These are all teams that will be heavily involved in Op Galaxy and the addition of the special officers will help us to carry out more warrants, conduct more searches, engage with more people, protect more victims and make more arrests.

The vast majority of our special officers, also have day jobs however with many off work or furloughed during the current situation, they have volunteered to give more hours to policing.  

In recent months this has helped them have the time to take on projects and support the teams.

One Special Sergeant Tom Gwilliam has been incredibly busy leading a project to tackle wildlife crime at Noddle Hill Nature Reserve in Hull.

As part of this, he, and a team of special officers, have been going to the reserve on a weekend to offer reassurance to the community, act as a deterrent to anyone looking to commit offences at the site and challenge anyone behaving inappropriately.

He has also been working with the local authority and residents to raise awareness of the issues and take action against anyone caught committing an offence at the reserve.

Here he speaks more about the project and how special officers help to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour:

 So, if volunteering as a special officer sounds like something you’d like to do you can find out more about how the scheme works and how to get involved here