The senior command team of South Yorkshire Police comprises the chief constable, the deputy chief constable, 3 assistant chief constables and a director of finance and administration. Together this team have the responsibility for the strategic direction and control of the force.
Doncaster, together with the other districts, have a district commander, Chief Superintendent Steve King, who is responsible for the management of his district supervising over 800 personnel. Doncaster Police Headquarters are based at Barnsley Road, Scawsby, where Chief Superintendent Steve King and his management team are located.
The main police station is situated on College Road in the middle of the town centre with 12 smaller stations located in rural areas of Doncaster. The majority of officers work from College Road however to avoid delays in responding to incidents officers do work from all the smaller stations situated at;
- Rossington
- Edlington
- Cantley
- Balby
- Thorne/stainforth
- Tickhill
-
Adwick
- Bentley
- Sprotborough
- Bawtry
- Askern
- Armthorpe
South Yorkshire Police Headquarters have a number of departments working from Snig Hill including the Senior Command Team, Personnel, recruitment, training and discipline and complaints. Also some of the serious crime squads e.g. murder, work from the headquarters and are available to assist Districts in times of need. The Headquarters have overall control over the six district policing areas.
Doncaster Police uses ICT to reduce the amount of paper work for officers and to store information about crimes committed and criminals in accordance with the Data Protection Act. The Police use ICT in everyday work to achieve their main priorities, using ICT for fingerprint identification, photographic identification, radio communications, telephone messages and email for circulating information.
It is very important that police officers don’t make any mistakes when completing statements and files and to make sure they don’t make any mistakes they can use Microsoft Word, with the spell check and word grammar on.
Crimes are recorded on the force computer and are kept safe and protected by use of individual password, this keeps the information safe from random people coming on to the computer and looking at the files. It is possible to interrogate the software to identify any crime hot spots, i.e. locations, type of crime, persistent offenders etc.
South Yorkshire has a website ( www.southyorks.police.uk ) where the public can view what is going on in their local community and can ask questions on the website. The public can look at information about crime reduction and any urgent press releases from the police. There are some older success stories if at anytime there is a need to refer back to them. Police headquarters can be contacted via email on the website, if the public wish to contact them about any policing matters in their area.
One of the police aims is to reduce serious road accidents and to achieve this Safer Doncaster has introduced a number of speed cameras situated through out Doncaster. The speed cameras have been placed in known accident locations in order to reduce vehicle speeds. The cameras record any vehicles travelling at a speed in access of the speed limit. Using the PNC (Police National Computer) the police identify the registered keeper of the vehicle who is sent a fixed penalty notice for exceeding the speed limit. The use of speed cameras has helped to reduce the number of serious and fatal road accidents in Doncaster.
Police officers in Doncaster are all issued with personal radio’s to help them communicate with the force control, which is situated in Sheffield. The radios enable individual officers to be able to communicate with each other and their supervisors
The police also use ICT to organise officer’s duties so they have sufficient officers on duty throughout the day. Doncaster has 4 duty groups with an inspector in charge of each group, the inspector has responsibility for the deployment of his officers recording there hours of duty on computer. It is important for the community and for the safety of the officers that the inspector deploys enough officers to deal with any emergency. If I serious incident occurs additional officers can easily be contacted using the radio and telephone communications.
I have highlighted the different ways the police use ICT which enables them to be more efficient and effective in their attempts to achieve their aims and objectives.
