The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard, is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement in the Metropolitan Police District, which currently consists of the 32 London boroughs. The MPD does not include the "square mile" of the City of London, which is policed by the much smaller City of London Police.
The Royal Parks of London are lands that were originally used for the recreation, mostly hunting, of the royal family. They are part of the hereditary possessions of The Crown.
The Royal Parks Constabulary (RPC) was the police force formerly responsible for the Royal Parks in London and a number of other locations in Greater London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlike most other police forces operating in England and Wales, the Royal Parks Constabulary did not report to the Home Office, but instead to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who provided funding for it through the Royal Parks Agency.
Most of the police forces of the United Kingdom use a standardised set of ranks, with a slight variation in the most senior ranks for the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police. Most of the British police ranks that exist today were chosen by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the Metropolitan Police, enacted under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829. The ranks at that time were deliberately chosen so that they did not correspond with military ranking, because of fears of a paramilitary force.
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.
A Basic Command Unit (BCU) is the largest unit into which territorial British Police forces are divided BCUs may alternatively be called an Area Command, a Division, a Local Policing Unit (LPU) or a Local Policing Team (LPT). There are 228 BCUs in England and Wales.
The Specialist Operations directorate is a unit of the Metropolitan Police of London, UK responsible for providing specialist policing capabilities including national security and counter-terrorism operations. The Specialist Operations Directorate is currently led by Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu.
The Metropolitan Police District (MPD) is the police area which is policed by the Metropolitan Police Service in London. It currently consists of the Greater London region, excluding the City of London. The Metropolitan Police District was created by the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 as an ad hoc area of administration because the built-up area of London spread at the time into many parishes and counties without an established boundary. The district expanded as the built up area grew and stretched some distance into rural land. When county police forces were set up in England, those of Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Surrey did not cover the parts of the counties within the MPD, while Middlesex did not have a county force. Similarly, boroughs in the MPD that elsewhere would have been entitled to their own police force did not have them.
Hampshire Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing the counties of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in South East England.
The Roads and Transport Policing Command, formerly the Safer Transport Command and Transport Operational Command Unit, is a unit of the London Metropolitan Police Service that polices roads, buses, bus routes, taxis and minicabs. It does not police national railways in London, London Underground, Docklands Light Railway or Tramlink, which fall under the remit of the British Transport Police (BTP).
The Kew Constabulary is a very small, specialised constabulary responsible for policing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Richmond-upon-Thames, England.
Wandsworth Parks and Events Police is a Wandsworth Borough Council service responsible for the routine patrolling of the parks, commons, and open spaces within the London Borough of Wandsworth, which has more green spaces than any other inner London borough. It also enforces byelaws, dog control orders, and other park regulations, and provides policing for special events. Its lineage may be traced to a 1984 foundation, although the present body dates from 2012, and was rebranded in 2015 with its current name and responsibilities.
The Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSC) is the volunteer police force of the Metropolitan Police Service. It is one of three Special Constabularies operating within London, the others being part of the City of London Police and British Transport Police. The service was created over 180 years ago under the Special Constables Act 1831, and currently consists of 1,731 officers, making it the largest in the UK.
Territorial Operations was a group of eighteen specialist Metropolitan Police units which were set up in 1986 as part of Sir Kenneth Newman's restructuring of the Metropolitan Police Service. The Territorial Operations units were designed to support the Metropolitan Police areas—while area-based policing was designed to decentralise the operations of New Scotland Yard, the TO units were intended to provide central operational and logistic support to Areas and divisional OCUs.
The Traffic Operational Command Unit (OCU), formally known as CO15, was the Road Policing Unit for the Metropolitan Police Service.
The Aviation Security Operational Command Unit (SO18) now renamed as Aviation Policing Command (SOAP) is a Specialist Operations unit of London's Metropolitan Police Service. The unit is responsible for providing policing and security for both Heathrow and London City airports. London's other airports, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton are policed by Sussex, Essex and the Bedfordshire Police respectively, as they are not located in the Metropolitan Police District.
MetCC, also known as the Met Contact Centre, Met Command and Control or MO12, is a department of Met Operations within Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service. It is responsible for receiving emergency and non-emergency public telephony within the Metropolitan Police and between the police and the public & other forces, and for the despatching of police to incidents. MetCC operates out of three centres in Lambeth, Hendon and Bow.
A Child Abuse Investigation Team/Unit (CAIT) is a unit within a police force in the United Kingdom, responsible for investigating offences relating to minors.
The Metropolitan Police of Greater London is organised into four main directorates, each with differing responsibilities. These are Frontline Policing, Met Operations, Specialist Operations, Professionalism and six civilian staffed support departments under the umbrella of Met Headquarters. Each is overseen by an Assistant Commissioner, or in the case of a support department a director of police staff which is the equivalent civilian grade.
