The West Yorkshire Constabulary was, from 1968 to 1974, the statutory police force for the West Riding of Yorkshire, in northern England.
It was formed under the Police Act 1964, and was a merger of the previous West Riding Constabulary along with six borough forces for the county boroughs of Barnsley, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Halifax, Huddersfield, Wakefield. The other four West Riding county boroughs, Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield and Rotherham retained independent police forces (a merged force for Sheffield/Rotherham).
The West Riding Constabulary had been originally set up in 1856, as required by the County and Borough Police Act 1856. The first Chief Constable was Lt Col C. A. Cobbe. The force's strength was 354 by the end of the year, and its headquarters were at Wakefield.
In 1974 the force was split, under the Local Government Act 1972. The bulk of the force went to form the new West Yorkshire Police (with Bradford and Leeds) and South Yorkshire Police (with Sheffield and Rotherham Constabulary the former Barnsley and Doncaster County Borough forces and the interlinked county areas), with other parts coming under the North Yorkshire Police, Cumbria Constabulary, Humberside Police, and Lancashire Police forces.
The Constabulary was portrayed in a negative light in the Red Riding trilogy.
Famous quotes containing the words west and/or constabulary:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“When constabulary duty’s to be done,
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)