Hayley supports West Midlands Police

[Richard]

Hello everybody, or Good Evening all!

The picture of Hayley in Police uniform had me thinking "'ello 'ello 'ello, what's all this about then?", so I did a bit of detective work and found this article at west-midlands.police.uk.

Here are the relevant extracts:-

Celebrity Specials

Some of the top names in showbusiness are supporting our campaign to recruit more Special Constables in Birmingham City Centre.

Some of the famous faces supporting us include Ant and Dec, Melinda Messenger, Denise Van Outen, Myleene Klass, Sue Nicholls, Frank Skinner, Ken Dodd OBE, Hayley Westenra and Graham Cole who plays PC Tony Stamp in The Bill.

Local personalities include Ed James and Hellon Wheels from 100.7 Heart FM, BBC Midlands Today presenter Nick Owen, Les Ross MBE, Joanne Malin and Bob Warman from Central News, and Ed Doolan MBE from BBC Radio WM.

Here’s what some of the special celebrities had to say...

"I really enjoyed my first time in Birmingham, it’s a long way from my hometown, Christchurch, in New Zealand, which is one of the safest cities in the World. It makes life so much more enjoyable when people can go about their daily business as they please. This is why I didn't hesitate for a minute when asked to help in the recruitment of more special constables to help make this famous city even safer and enjoyable for everyone." - Hayley Westenra

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I couldn't find the date of the article.

Richard

[stevemacdonald]

Hi Richard,

Looking over the site you linked I read that these special constables' presence is considered highly useful in crime prevention.

Here's part of one special constable's story from that site, and I've put in bold something puzzling to me:

"A few more stop and searches and then a walk up to the Mall Pallasades shopping centre with my Partner, John Harrison. Walking past Woolworths John noticed a young man helping himself to a number of chocolate bars. As a security officer, John’s instincts told him that this guy was not going to pay for them so we waited for him to leave the store. The man admitted to stealing the goods and we arrested him. The DO arrived and eased the situation (and saved us hours of administration) by issuing him with a FPN. The two bars of chocolate had cost the thief £80."

Okay, so the bad guy was caught, hooray. But what exactly did they do to prevent the crime? Maybe he would have paid on the spot if reminded to, but one of the officer's "instincts" kicked in that an arrest was possible so they gave this chocolate lover enough rope to hang himself.

I'm so impressed.

Steve

[gareth]

Hmmm,

They should learn to timestamp those pages,

I don't know the exact date of this article, but it dates back to either autumn 2004 or autumn 2003, and that's what I know for a fact. I remeber seeing it just before a Christmas, and it wasn't last year ....

Cheers

Gerrit