Juggling Physics with the Police!
(photo credit, West Midlands Police Guardian Twitter @GuardianWMP)
Report from Special Constable Nicholas Fiorita (RPS)
Nick left Rydal Penrhos in 2019 having held the position of Head Boy and having achieved one A* and three A grades in his A Levels to secure a place at Warwick University to study Physics.
“I joined West Midlands Police as a Special Constable in February this year, a week before my 19th birthday. This was after a number of months completing the recruitment process which I applied for the day I got my A level results. The training was very difficult to balance with my Physics degree at Warwick University as it was held in Birmingham.
However, both the police and the University helped me to accommodate my schedules. Sadly, training was postponed during the initial lockdown in March. This moved online for legislative training and 8 days of in-person First Aid and Personal Safety training in June. Finally, in July I was attested and became an authorised warranted Police Officer.
The difference between a Special Constable (SC) and a Police Constable (PC) is that the latter get paid and have more in-depth training whereas we volunteer our time, SCs have the same powers and carry the same equipment (apart from firearms). We are expected to complete a minimum of 16 hours a month of shifts, but most do more than this.
I was only able to start my shifts in September as I was in Wales over the summer. In the month of September, I volunteered 187 hours, as my second year at university didn`t start until October. I enjoyed that month more than I had imagined, and I was able to fully experience life as a regular police officer as I followed a regular police officer`s shift pattern. As a special constable, you join a Neighbourhood Police Team and stay with them for one year before being able to change department if you want to. I am stationed with St Michaels, which is Coventry`s city centre NHT team.
Working in the city centre is fast-paced and means that the crimes and incidents that we are involved with are diverse and ever-changing. I managed to get rotations of half a week on each of the following teams: response, force CID (criminal investigative department) and Adult PPU investigations (Public Protection Unit – basically domestic violence). This was after two weeks with my Neighbourhood team during September.
During this time, I completed a number of arrests, warrants, searches, interviews and patrols both in marked and unmarked police cars or on foot. I have even seized uninsured cars and no police training is complete without having written a few parking tickets of course. It is quite remarkable how quickly cars disappear when we arrive and issue the first ticket. Of course, they reappear just as quickly when we drive away!
I think the most interesting arrest I have made is for money laundering, but this was quite a rare occurrence and it was even rarer that I got to interview the suspect afterwards. However, every arrest is complicated and very serious. I have not had to use many Covid-19 laws as the approach is always to use enforcement as the very last resort.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as a Special Constable so far and though I have a lot more to learn still, both the training and being on duty has been a real eye-opener. More than ever before I can appreciate how fortunate I was to receive the education at Rydal Penrhos, most people are not as lucky.
The photo is from an operation called Operation Guardian conducted by West Midlands Police.
This is a long term operation and the taskforce that goes across the West Midlands, when it came to Coventry one Friday evening, I joined and we went across hot spots in the city centre with a number of officers and a drugs dog pictured there. “
