Cumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Peter McCall, met with some of Cumbria’s newest police officers at Cumbria’s Constabulary’s Learning and Development Centre in Penrith.
The cohort of trainees are in their 21st week of training and will soon be placed across the county to serve and protect the public. Police training and recruitment has continued during the COVID-19 pandemic with precautions being set in place to protect all new recruits and trainers.
Speaking on the new recruits, PCC Peter McCall, said: “It’s great to meet some of the newest officers who will soon be out on our streets preventing crime, pursuing criminals and making our communities a safer place to live.
“COVID-19 has really been a trying time for everyone including the Constabulary who have had to cope with ever more demand for support over and above dealing with crime, but they have handled it incredibly well and continued all aspects of police working during the pandemic including the training of the new recruits.
“We have continued recruitment over the past 7 months and were one of the first forces in the country to get our allocation of 51 additional officers into uniform.
“Together with increases in the last three years we now have an additional 96 officers since 2016 and they are being allocated right across the county in areas which have not seen permanent presence for many years.
“Of course we always want more and quicker and I understand that, there are two more phases of Operation Uplift to come and we will be lobbying hard to ensure we get a fair share of the remaining allocation of 20,000, so that we can do even more to put officers back into our communities where the public want to see them.”
