Civil Nuclear Police Authority and Civil Nuclear Constabulary
PC James Brown, an Authorised Firearms Officer at Sellafield, set up the visit and spoke to 250 students and teachers at the Lakes College in Workington, alongside colleagues from the CNC Firearms Training Unit and officers from Cumbria Constabulary, who James invited to take part.
The aim of the visit was to discuss community engagement and Jamie and his CNC colleagues talked about Project Servator and its national rollout, as well as the Stay Safe campaign and the importance of reporting suspicious activity.
Project Servator sees highly visible yet unpredictable deployments of specially trained CNC officers around the Sellafield site and the surrounding local community. The operational deployments involve officers working together with communities to report suspicious activity. These officers are deployed to deter, help detect, and provide reassurance and confidence to members of the public.
The tactics used as part of Project Servator are not new and are also used regularly by the City of London Police, British Transport Police and Police Scotland. They have been developed to enhance the effectiveness of our resources and not as a response to any change in threat.
PC Brown said: We had very positive feedback from the students who listened to our talk and were able to ask questions about our role. As a national armed police force, a major part of our role is counter terrorism policing. We need the local communities around our sites to be vigilant to any suspicious activity and it was great to be able to get this message across to the young people at the schools and colleges we visited.
As well as setting up other visits to schools and colleges in the area, Project Servator officers have also visited offices and local business to spread awareness of the initiative.
We have been invited back to the Lakes College in September to speak to their new intake of students and look forward to meeting them and spreading awareness of the CNC, Project Servator and the part they can play in community policing.