A North Wales Police officer has recently returned from an “unofficial” exchange trip to America.
PC Richard Wynne, based in Bangor, but who was born in the USA and is the first American North Wales Police Officer, spent a month visiting his mother in Albany, New York.
During his time there he experienced policing American style working with several departments including the New York State Police, Albany County Sheriff’s Department and the New York State Department of Corrections (the NY State prison service).
PC Wynne said that during his visit he learnt about cost saving techniques and compared notes about community policing.
He said: “One of the largest differences I noticed was in community policing. Several years ago due to Federal Government funding – ie money from Washington – there were comprehensive community policing projects.
“Over the years as this money dried up those projects have been closed down with only one program still running the School Resource Officers. These are very similar to our School Liaision Officers but with less teaching emphasis and more on investigating crimes that occur in the schools.
“They also seem to act as CBM’s for the kids, becoming a friendly face kids can turn to for issues with domestic abuse, bullying, and substance abuse. I was amazed by how the much the kids from one school loved the SRO I worked with from Guilderland PD.
“When I spoke with managers I was told all officers are expected to act in the manner I described for our CBM’s. They also had no employees with a role similar to PCSO’s.
He said that when he spoke about trying to improve the North Wales Police services and cut costs, there were several suggestions such as to give officers more discretion, reduce management levels, utilize technology to cut down on paperwork and office time as all police cars had onboard computers with ability to print out typed tickets.
“Overall I would say that policing was more alike than not between US and UK law enforcement,” he said.
“The biggest differences I noted were the higher level of morale and more discretion given to American officers. However, the UK benefits from improved inter-departmental communication and teamwork with the unified national policing standard.”
