South Wales Police (; SWP) is one of the four territorial police forces in Wales. It is headquartered in Bridgend.
The force was formed as South Wales Constabulary on 1 June 1969, by the amalgamation of the former Glamorgan Constabulary, Cardiff City Police, Swansea Borough Police and Merthyr Tydfil Borough Police. In 1974, with the reorganisation of local government, the force's area was expanded to cover the newly created counties of Mid, South and West Glamorgan. In 1996, the force adopted its current name and lost the Rhymney Valley area to Gwent Police due to further local government reorganisation.
Today, the force serves the principal areas of Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea and the Vale of Glamorganmost of the historic county of Glamorgan.
Organisation The force is overseen by the South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, which replaced a police authority of councillors, magistrates and lay members in 2012.
South Wales Police covers an area of and population of 1.34million people. In the 2020-2021 Financial year, the force's annual budget was £315.8million."Police Funding For England and Wales 2015-2021" (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/900017/police-funding-england-and-wales-2015-to-2021-hosb1620.pdf) accessed online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-funding-for-england-and-wales-2015-to-2021
, the force has 3,119 police officers, 152 special constables, 366 police community support officers (PCSO), 265 police support volunteers (PSV), and 2,167 staff. Of the 3,012 full-time constables , 2,057 were male and 956 female, 79 officers identified as being from black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups, representing 2.2% of the workforce. BAME groups are disproportionality under-represented in the force, with 6.6% of the population covered by the force identifying as BAME.
At the most recent PEEL (police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy) inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services in 2019, the force scored "good" across the three key areas, with a number of areas for improvement also identified.
As with all public bodies in Wales, the force is required to adhere to the Welsh language standards set out by the Welsh Government. These include a commitment to maintain equal status of English and Welsh, bi-lingual signage and correspondence and a standing right for individuals to be dealt with in Welsh if they so choose. The Welsh Language Commissioner publishes biennial reports into the compliance with the standards.
Chief constables Since the formation of the force in its current form, it has had ten chief constables. 19691971: Melbourne Thomas 19711979: Sir Gwilym Morris 19791983: Sir John Woodcock 19831988: David East 19891996: Robert Lawrence 19962003: Sir Anthony Burden 20042009: Barbara Wilding 20102017: Peter Vaughan 20182020: Matt Jukes 2020present: Jeremy Vaughan
Police stations The following police stations have operational public front desks .
Air Support Unit The South and East Wales Air Support Unit was a consortium established to provide police aviation for South Wales and Gwent police. It was managed by Inspector Gary Smart and operated a Eurocopter EC135 from MOD St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. From October 2012 it was replaced by the National Police Air Service.
Recruitment As of 2019, police officer applicants to South Wales Police are required to have a degree as part of the Degree Holder Entry Programme (DHEP). For those who already hold a degree in any subject area, a two-year programme combining on-the-job practical learning and operational competence with academic learning. Upon completion, successful candidates achieve a Diploma in Professional Policing Practice. South Wales Police also offer a pre-join degree programme in partnership with The University of South Wales.
Non degree holders can join under the Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA), a three-year practice-based higher-education programme, leading to a BSc Honours Degree in Professional Policing Practice.
New recruits are selected under the national standard College of Policing SEARCH assessment centre and fitness test.
Controversies The Cardiff Newsagent Three were three men wrongly convicted of the 1987 murder of Cardiff newsagent Phillip Saunders, who was attacked with a shovel in the back yard of his Cardiff home and later died in hospital. Michael O'Brien, Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood spent 11 years in prison before being released.
In 1989, the body of Karen Price was discovered in Cardiff. Two construction workers unearthed a rolled carpet while installing a garden behind a house. It was disclosed that a number of officers from the South Wales Constabulary who were involved in the investigation of Price's murder had also worked on the Lynette White and Philip Saunders murder inquiries, in which six men were wrongfully convicted. Other sources of concern in the Price case, according to the commission, included breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and the PACE Code of Practice, which govern the detention, treatment, and questioning of persons by police officers; the credibility of the prosecution witnesses; "oppressive handling by the police of key witnesses"; and the "veracity of Mr. Ali's guilty plea".
Suppression of anti-apartheid protest In November 1969, the South Africa national rugby union team played Swansea RFC at St. Helen's Rugby and Cricket Ground as part of the 1969–70 South Africa rugby union tour of Britain and Ireland, during which many matches were protested due to South Africa's system of Apartheid. The match that took place in Swansea became known as the "Battle of Swansea" due to violent clashes between protesters, police and stewards hired to assist with policing of the match. In the aftermath of the match, 30 complaints were made against the police and over 100 people were injured including 11 police officers. Eyewitness and future MP Hywel Francis describing the policing of the event as "a military-style operation". The leader of the protests, Peter Hain described the response to the protest as being "particularly nasty" and described his shock at discovering "a friend had a broken jaw and a woman demonstrator almost lost an eye". After the event the then Home Secretary, James Callaghan spoke in the House of Commons criticising the police's use of stewards stating "My own view, and I want to put this to the chief constables, is that it is better for the police to tackle this job themselves rather than to have amateur assistants, no doubt of a very beefy character, but not necessarily designed to ensure that the peace is not breached."
Murder of Lynette White and false convictions In November 1988, South Wales Constabulary charged five mixed-race men with the murder of Lynette White, although none of the scientific evidence discovered at the crime scene could be linked to them, and a white male was seen in the vicinity at the time of the murder. On conclusion of the longest murder trial in British history, in November 1990 three of the men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. In December 1992, the convictions were ruled unsafe and quashed by the Court of Appeal after it was decided that the police investigating the murder had acted improperly. The wrongful conviction of the three men has been called one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in recent times. The police claimed that they had done nothing wrong, that the men had been released purely on a technicality of law, and resisted all calls for the case to be reopened.
In 2004, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began a review of the conduct of the police during the original inquiry. Over the next 12 months, around 30 people were arrested in connection with the investigation, 19 of whom were serving or retired police officers. In 2007 three of the prosecution witnesses at the original murder trial were convicted of perjury and each jailed for 18 months. In 2009 two further witnesses from the original trial were also charged with perjury. Along with eight former police officers charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice, they stood trial in 2011. The trial was the largest police corruption trial in British criminal history. A further four police officers were due to be tried on the same charges in 2012. In November 2011, the case collapsed when the defence submitted that copies of files which they said they should have seen had instead been destroyed. As a result, the judge ruled that the defendants could not receive a fair trial and all 14 were acquitted. In January 2012 the "destroyed" documents were found, still in the original box in which they had been sent to South Wales Police by the IPCC.
Jeffrey Davies rape convictions In July 2016, a former police detective was jailed for 18 years after he was found guilty of raping two women. Jeffrey Davies, 45, of Aberdare, was serving in the Rhondda Valley when he raped his victims in 2002 and 2003. Cardiff Crown Court heard he was dismissed from the force in 2013 after being convicted of other sexual assaults. IPCC Commissioner for Wales, Jan Williams, has said Davies was a "sex offender hiding within the police".
Ian Watkins investigation
An Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation report, published in August 2017, into the force's investigation of the child sex offender Ian Watkins, found that they had failed a number of times from 2008 to 2012 act on reports of Watkins' behaviour. The report concluded:
South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Jeremy Vaughan said his force "entirely accepts and regrets" the findings of the report.
Use of facial recognition South Wales Police became one of the first three Police forces in the United Kingdom to use facial recognition to police large events alongside the Metropolitan Police and Leicestershire Police, although the latter force discontinued use soon after adoption. The use of facial recognition was met by much criticism, mainly revolving around the high rate of false positives with over 90% of people identified being incorrectly flagged. The use of the technology at football games was described by the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones as "disproportionate" adding that its use could lead to miscarriages of justice. Prof Paul Wiles, the UK biometrics commissioner criticised the lack of government oversight of the technology saying that due to the lack of legal framework governing the technology it is at the police's discretion whether the public benefit exceeds the "significant intrusion into an individual’s privacy" caused by the use of facial recognition.
The first time a court had ever considered the use of facial recognition technology was when someone who had been photographed by the technology brought a legal challenge against the use of facial recognition by South Wales Police arguing that its use constitutes a breach of privacy. This legal challenge was unsuccessful but is currently being appealed.