Dudley Special Constabulary

District Officer James Horton is the senior officer responsible for the effective and efficient leadership of Dudley Local Policing Unit Special Constabulary.

There are currently 70 members of the Special Constabulary based on Dudley Local Policing Unit (LPU), covering Sedgley, Dudley, Brierley Hill, Kingswinford, Netherton, Halesowen, Stourbridge and Lye, who are actively working alongside regular police officers and police community support officers, as part of the neighbourhood teams.

Each team is supervised by a Section Officer (Special Sergeant in some forces), whose responsibilities include co-ordinating duties, operationally supervising officers, responding to day-to-day queries raised by Special Constables as well as liaison with neighbourhood Sergeants, ensuring local neighbourhood priorities are achieved.

The Special Constabulary are an integral part of the LPUs commitment to neighbourhood policing and officers, when available, attend Partners and Community Together (PACT) meetings. In addition to working on neighbourhood priorities, Special Constables provide support to Operation Nightsafe, policing the entertainment areas of Stourbridge Town Centre.  They engage in high visibility foot and mobile patrols to provide public reassurance and take part in pre-planned operations, such as taxi enforcement, drink drive campaigns, drugs operations and provide inter-LPU support.

Learning and development (training) is vital for frontline policing duties. All new student officers undertake an initial 22 week learning programme, including a role based personal safety-training course.  This is in addition to the minimum 16 hours of duty each officer is required to complete per month, which forms part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA).