Introduction and Welcome

Hello and welcome to the University of Law, and more specifically, welcome to this course which is about how to become a police officer in England and Wales. My name is Mark Gore, and I’ll be your tutor on this course. To give you a bit of a background of myself, I was a police officer for 30 years. I was a commanding Metropolitan Police Service, and now I’m one of the tutors on the policing program based at the University of Law. I think it probably gives me a bit of an insight, and give you an understanding and an overview on the skills attributes that require you to become a police officer. I’m really pleased that you’ve chosen this course.

Hopefully, you’re going to find it both informative and instructional, and it may hopefully help you guide on your journey if you decide to become a police officer. Now, the structure of the course I’ve already indicated is over three weeks. Some of the things that we’re going to be looking at are the attributes, values, and attitudes needed to become a police officer. Maybe examining your own kind of motivation. We’ll look a little bit more detailed about the police service itself. We’ll look at things like the rank structure. Give you an overview of the specialist departments that exist within the police service, and maybe some things you could do should you decide to pursue a career in the police service.

We’ll talk about diversity inclusion, which is an incredibly important part of policing, and we’ll examine why that’s important to you as a police officer. Then we will finally look at obviously the roots into the police service as part of the policing educational qualifications framework. That may enable you to decide which is the most appropriate option for you to take should you decide to become a police officer. But most importantly, I just thank you for choosing this course. As I said, we’ll be working together over the next few weeks, and I look forward to that. Thank you.