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The Police Memorial Trust is a charitable organisation founded in 1984 and based in London. The trust's objective is to erect memorials to British police officers killed in the line of duty, at or near the spot where they died, thereby acting as a permanent reminder to the public of the sacrifice they made.
The Police Memorial Trust was the brainchild of film producer Michael Winner. Inspired by the fatal shooting on 17 April 1984 of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London, Winner wrote a letter to the editor of The Times newspaper suggesting a memorial be erected in Fletcher's honour. After receiving donations from members of the public, Winner established the trust on 3 May 1984.
The first Police Memorial Trust memorial was erected for Fletcher and was unveiled at St James's Square in London by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher on 1 February 1985.
The trust's third memorial, and the first to be erected outside London, was sited at the seafront at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, where PC Brian Bishop was fatally shot by an armed robber on 22 August 1984. Bishop's memorial was unveiled by the then home secretary Douglas Hurd, on 19 February 1986.
On 3 October 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled a monument in Luton to mark the site of the fatal stabbing of PC Jonathan Henry.
A total of 50 memorials in honour of police officers killed on duty have been erected throughout the United Kingdom. They include Insp Raymond Codling and the three officers who died in the Shepherd's Bush Murders; PC Keith Blakelock; PC Sharon Beshenivsky; and PC Ged Walker.
In the mid-1990s the Police Memorial Trust proposed a single memorial for all police officers who had died in the course of their duties. This became The National Police Memorial, which is sited in St James's Park at the junction of Horse Guards Road and The Mall. It was unveiled on 26 April 2005 by Elizabeth II on behalf of the Police Memorial Trust. It contains a list of all the officers who died, supplied by the Police Roll of Honour Trust.
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The murder of Yvonne Fletcher, a Metropolitan Police officer, occurred on 17 April 1984, when she was fatally wounded by a shot fired from the Libyan embassy on St James's Square, London, by an unknown gunman. Fletcher had been deployed to monitor a demonstration against the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and died shortly afterwards. Her death resulted in an eleven-day siege of the embassy, at the end of which those inside were expelled from the country and the United Kingdom severed diplomatic relations with Libya.
Cumbria Constabulary is the territorial police force in England covering Cumbria. As of September 2017, the force had 1,108 police officers, 535 police staff, 93 police community support officers, 25 designated officers and 86 special constables. In terms of officer numbers, it is the 7th smallest of the 48 police forces of the United Kingdom. Conversely, its geographic area of responsibility is the 7th largest police area of a territorial police force in the United Kingdom. The force area's size and its population of just under 500,000 people makes it sparsely populated. The only major urban areas are Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness.
Norfolk Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for the county of Norfolk in England. In March 2020, the force had a strength of 1,602 police officers, 193 special constables, 1,166 police staff, and 138 volunteers. The force serves a population of 908,000 in an area of 2,079 square miles (5,380 km2).
The Shepherd's Bush murders, also known as the Massacre of Braybrook Street, involved the murder of three police officers in London by Harry Roberts and two others in 1966.
The National Police Memorial is a memorial in central London, commemorating about 4,000 police officers killed in the course of their duties in the United Kingdom. It was designed by Lord Foster of Thames Bank and Per Arnoldi and unveiled in 2005. The project architect for Foster was Peter Ridley.
Merseyside Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Merseyside in North West England. The service area is 647 square kilometres with a population of around 1.5 million. As of September 2017 the service has 3,484 police officers, 1,619 police staff, 253 police community support officers, 155 designated officers and 208 special constables. The force is led by Chief Constable Serena Kennedy.
Leicestershire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Leicestershire and Rutland in England. Its headquarters are at Enderby, Leicestershire.
PC Sharon Beshenivsky was a West Yorkshire Police constable shot dead by a criminal gang during a robbery in Bradford on 18 November 2005, becoming the seventh female police officer in Great Britain to be killed on duty. Her colleague, PC Teresa Millburn, was seriously injured in the same incident. Millburn had joined the force less than two years earlier; Beshenivsky had served only nine months in the force at the time of her death.
Hertfordshire Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Hertfordshire in England. Its headquarters is in Welwyn Garden City. The current chief constable is Charlie Hall. As of March 2019, the force consists of over 1,900 police officers, 235 PCSOs, over 1500 police staff, as well as being supported by more than 410 special constables.
Durham Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing County Durham and Darlington in North East England.
Staffordshire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent in the West Midlands of England. It is made up of eleven Local Policing Teams, whose boundaries are matched to the nine local authorities within Staffordshire.
PC Gerald Michael "Ged" Walker was an English police dog handler with Nottinghamshire Police who was killed in the line of duty in Bulwell, Nottingham, in 2003.
PC Brian John Bishop was a British police officer who was shot in the head by an armed robber in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, on 22 August 1984. He died from his injuries five days later in a London hospital.
The Canadian Police and Peace Officers' Memorial is a memorial in Ottawa, Ontario, commemorating approximately 900 Canadian law enforcement officers killed in the course of their duties. Dedicated in 1994, it is located at the northwest corner of the Parliament Hill grounds, overlooking the Ottawa River. The memorial consists of the Police Memorial Pavilion, a reconstruction of a 1877 gazebo by Thomas Seaton Scott, and a glass-and-steel perimeter wall etched with the names of the fallen officers, which was designed by landscape architectural firm Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg.
PC Jonathan Charles Henry was a British police officer who was murdered in Luton, Bedfordshire, whilst on duty and responding to reports of a stabbing in the town centre.
DC Stephen Robin Oake, QGM, was a police officer serving as an anti-terrorism detective with Greater Manchester Police in the United Kingdom who was murdered while attempting to arrest a suspected terrorist in Manchester on 14 January 2003.
WPC Nina Alexandra Mackay was a police officer serving with London's Metropolitan Police Service who was fatally stabbed on 24 October 1997 by a man with paranoid schizophrenia she was attempting to arrest. She is the only female police officer in Great Britain to have been stabbed to death while on duty and her killing was the first of a female officer since the murder of Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.
The Garryhinch ambush was a surprise attack on the Garda Síochána by the Provisional IRA on 16 October 1976. A bomb planted by the IRA in a farmhouse at Garryhinch on the County Laois-County Offaly border in the Republic of Ireland was exploded. Garda Michael Clerkin was killed in the blast and four other Gardaí at the scene were badly wounded. The incident was one of the few occasions during The Troubles when police officers in the Republic of Ireland were deliberately targeted.
The Police Roll of Honour Trust is a charitable organisation registered in England & Wales and Scotland, it was founded in 2000 and records all those British police officers who have lost their lives on and in the line of duty. It has been granted a Royal Charter.
