OFFICERS PAST AND PRESENT MARK 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF ST HELENS STATION

This September was the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of St Helens police station. To mark the occasion, members of the National Association of Retired Police Officers (NARPO) were invited to the station on Friday 22 September to meet current serving officers and staff and tour the station.

Fifty years ago, the police station’s traditional dark-blue enquiry counter doors were opened, dozens of uniformed constables filed into the parade room for the first briefing – accoutrements in hand, and the officer in charge, Chief Superintendent Jack Watson, was probably admiring the view from his corner office window on the second floor; because in 1973, this was a view across the grassed area in front of the station, and the traffic on College Street did not run parallel to the front car park as it does now.

St Helens police station was a brand-new build for Lancashire Constabulary prior to the formation of Merseyside Police and a boundary change in 1974 that saw the building become part of the Merseyside force estate. Hailed as ultra-modern at the time, featuring a state-of-the-art communications control room and cell block, it brought in a new era of policing using more advanced radio communications and mobile patrols to improve the policing response to incidents across the area.

Chief Inspector of Operations at St Helens, Paul Holden, greeted the NARPO guests during a short presentation and provided them with a guided tour of the station that proved to be a real trip down Memory Lane when the retired colleagues saw a comparison of how the vehicle fleet has changed.

Leading the group into the rear yard of the police station, Chief Inspector Holden revealed a current patrol car parked alongside a 1973 Ford Escort and 1996 Vauxhall Astra. Some of the NARPO members, which included former police officers and a Scenes of Crime Officer (SOCO), recalled being among the first to drive the new Ford Escort “panda cars” of the time.

The group was joined by officers currently based at St Helens, plus Assistant Chief Constable Jon Roy, head of Local Policing, Merseyside’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Emily Spurrell and the Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, Jeanie Bell.

Chief Inspector Holden said: “It has been a fantastic opportunity for our retired colleagues to meet young-in-service officers and staff stationed at St Helens, swap stories and discover how much has changed in fifty years.

"Something that hasn't changed though, is the reason all of these officers and staff joined the police service; from student officers to retired senior officers, the reasons were the same: to protect people and pursue offenders – to keep their community safe and make a difference.

“Police stations come and go but I’m proud to say that our commitment to putting our community first in everything that we do, remains.”