West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is the 4th largest Police Service in the UK serving approximately 2.1 million people residing in five metropolitan districts in an area covering 2000 square kilometres. The WYP jurisdiction is policed by 5,600 police officers and 2,400 support staff. West Yorkshire is varied, combining busy cities and towns with quiet rural villages. The people are equally varied and represent a diverse range of ethnic cultural and economic backgrounds. Policing is delivered from 5 separate police districts, providing most of the day‐to‐day policing services. There are also teams of specialist police and support staff personnel based at other locations force wide. The overwhelming majority of police officers are engaged in operational duties that contribute towards the community safety for the people of West Yorkshire. The Chief Constable of WYP is Mark Gilmore QPM is held to account by Mark Burns-Williamson OBE, the elected Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) for West Yorkshire.
The PCC includes the National Police Air Service (NPAS) for the UK, the Police National Legal Database (PNLD) and West Yorkshire for Innovation (WyFi). WyFi is a research team of police officers and police support staff who identify and capture innovation in policing with the aim of bringing research to operational reality to improve policing practice to keep communities safe and felling safer. West Yorkshire Police aims to provide a world class policing service through innovation, income and investment. Through UK and European grant funding the Innovation team, consisting of operational police officers and staff from specialist backgrounds prepare, negotiate and submit funding bids, managing creative, futuristic and innovative projects. Working with international consortiums consisting of law enforcement agencies, academics and private industry the team interact at a local, national and international level collaborating to tackle new and emerging crime trends utilising advancing technology and sharing best practice. They are currently engaged on a number of projects including Social Media Anti-Radicalisation Training, Crisis management, Cyber Crime and an open source environmental scanning tool. West Yorkshire Police has extensive experience in emergency planning and crisis situations working with a network of partners and first line responders with an active working relationship with the West Yorkshire Resilience Forum. The West Yorkshire Resilience Forum (which itself is comprised of smaller, Resilience Forums, which exist within each district of the County) is comprised of all 'Blue Light' emergency services, healthcare providers, local government organisations and providers of critical national infrastructure. They provide security and interoperability arrangements in the case of crisis or attack, regularly exchanging best-practice and working information as well as taking part in table-top and live-play emergency exercise scenarios.
Role in ARIES
POCC will assume the role of an Law Enforcement Agency end users, providing legal requirements that will define the ecosystem, its architecture and protocols, and the demonstrators that will validate ARIES approach to significantly reduce identify theft related crimes. POCC will lead one of the prototype demonstrator where the impact and effective reduction of identity-related crimes will be proved.
