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Police station
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
A police station is a building which serves as the headquarters of a police force or unit which serves a specific district. These buildings typically contain offices, various accommodations for their personnel and their vehicles such as locker rooms, temporary holding cells, and interview/interrogation rooms.
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Large departments may have many stations to cover the area they serve. The names used for these facilities include:
- Detachment for local facilities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
- District offices are used by the California Highway Patrol
- Division by the Toronto Police Service and the Los Angeles Police Department
- Precinct or precinct house for regional facilities of the New York City Police Department and other urban police departments in the United States
- Substations are used by many departments, especially county sheriffs
The county constabularies in Great Britain used to be organised on village lines. Most villages of any size (and even many small villages and hamlets) had a police station, often called a "police house", which was staffed by a single constable, who also lived there with his family. He could be called out by the locals at any time of the day or night and during the day also patrolled the village and surrounding area on a bicycle. These local police stations were grouped together into sections under a sergeant, whose station was known as a "sergeant's station". This was usually a larger station in a large village or small town, staffed by one or more constables as well as the sergeant; although in very rural areas it may have been just another single-officer police house. Larger towns in the county constabulary areas had police stations staffed by a number of officers, often under the command of an inspector or superintendent, usually also commanding a sub-division or division respectively, and therefore giving the names of "sub-divisional station" or "divisional station" to their stations.
UK police stations may have:
- uniformed police officers who respond to 999 calls and provide community policing.
- Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who are tasked with general day to day patrol in the community.
- Traffic Wardens who enforce parking regulations.
- Crime Reduction Officers who are tasked with attending public functions, visiting households with advice and handing out items such as rape alarms.
- Firearms Licenser who maintains firearms certificates etc.
- Station Reception Officers (SROs) who are in charge of the front desk and do administration.
- Fingerprinting/Identification Officers who deal with Criminal Identities for Archives.
- In Metropolitan Police stations police cadets may be present helping regular officers/PCSOs or any police staff.
- Special Constables/Sergeants/Inspectors will be present. A Special is a part-time fully trained Police Officer with powers of arrest.
- Criminal Investigation Department officers (CID) to investigate crime.
- smaller stations usually have a number of Detective Constables (DC's) headed by a Detective Sergeant (DS), or in larger stations DC's, DS's and Detective Inspectors (DI's) are present, with the Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) in charge of the department.
- most stations have temporary holding cells where an arrested offender can be held overnight until escort to the court for sentencing.
- stations have kitchens so the officers can have hot meals, paperwork rooms and rest rooms.
Most city police station's have two types of police vehicle. Whats called a Response Car, which respond's to 999 call's and carries a range of equipment to deal with incidents. Also these cars usually tend to be faster cars as they need to get to an incident quickly. Another type is a Panda Car usually less-capable cars of going very fast this car is generally used for community policing - just providing a presence in the community basically but still carries some vital equipment but nothing in the range of a response car.