The Merseyside Police Student Insight week was classroom-based interspersed with field training exercises for the students in a controlled and relaxed atmosphere with Business Casual dress code and packed lunch provided. The objective was to give the BAME students real life experience of the different roles and activities involved with policing.

The daily planned arrival of the students at Merseyside Police Headquarters was 0800 so they would sign in and be given a Visitors Badge at reception for our stay with Merseyside Police. Once congregated in the conference suite with staff greetings over, the students were given a short presentation about the day’s planned activities and which facility they would be transported to for the day and the time of travel back to the HQ.

On Monday, we travelled to the Operational Command Centre Speke where the students had presentations from officers of the Roads Policing and Armed Response Unit in the morning and in the afternoon, they went through Matrix Input and Dog Section Input.  The highlight of the day for the students was meeting the police dog closely followed by the students seeing and touching the equipment carried by the Armed response units though no photographs were permitted.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the students travelled to Lea Green, St Helens training centre where the training was predominately exercised based.

On Tuesday morning  the students were shown around the training centre and watched a few of the training exercises like forced entry and had Protective Training School Input – Use of Force, Stop & Search, National Decision-Making Model, the afternoon session was used for Hydra Training Exercises, students were split into different teams and using simulated policing scenarios, the students were called upon to make real time policing decisions within their teams under remote observation and provide justifications for the decisions made.

Wednesday was a day filled with more interactive experiences, in the morning, students received input on the use of radios and learnt how to operate the radios, they also received custody suite input and were provided with the kit that police officers wear to examine and try on. The afternoon session was dedicated to Role Play Scenarios where the students took the roles of police officers to perform police duties based in the earlier inputs they received. The role-play scenarios involved real  police officers playing different actor roles with others correcting the students on the policing procedures as the students took part in various scenarios. The role-play scenarios were the highlight of the students day with all students actively participating.

Thursday was spent at Mather Avenue, Liverpool where the morning was spent receiving Crime Scene Investigation Input with some exercises and the afternoon was spent with investigation input, On Friday we returned to Mather Avenue, Liverpool and the students spent the morning with the Mounted Section,  Students were talked through the different careers and tasks involved with the mounted section before we returned to HQ for lunch and Recruitment Presentation before the students received a message from Chief Constable Serena Kennedy and were awarded their attendance certificates.