Rural police officers in Northumberland receive specialist advanced roads training

Rural officers, who cover everywhere from Haltwhistle to Horncliffe and everything in between, underwent a specially created two-day-long advanced course.

The training, provided by experienced Motor Patrols officers from the force, focused on enhancing rural officers’ skills and knowledge around attending to and responding to collisions and sharpening disruption techniques to target travelling criminals.

Superintendent Sam Rennison of Northumbria Police’s Northern Area Command, who formerly led the force’s Operations and Motor Patrols departments, has praised the training.

She said: “Rural Northumberland is a vast area and it’s an area like no other in our force. That’s why it’s so important that our officers covering the hardest journeys are given advanced specialist training to help them protect and serve the communities they police to the very best of their abilities.

“It’s so important to us that we offer an outstanding service to every community and that’s why it’s essential we recognise that each neighbourhood has different policing needs and challenges.

“Rural officers do not typically face the same challenges that their city-based colleagues do. The Northumberland countryside is so extensive that there’s only one way for law breakers to move around our region with ease – that’s by using our rural roads, making advance motor patrol skills extremely useful.

“This is just one area of additional training that we’re investing in for our rural officers over the coming weeks and months.

“Investing in our cops and staff is the best investment we can possibly make.”