On this day in Yorkshire

Wireless aid to police work: 24-hour service in the West Riding
On This Day in YorkshireOn This Day in Yorkshire
On This Day in Yorkshire

February 25, 1936

Wireless ceases this week to be a purely experimental sideline in the work of the West Riding Constabulary, and becomes an integral part of police service.

Attention is focused on the considerable progress in the use of wireless in the West Riding Police service by the approval given last week by West Riding Standing Joint Committee to the purchase of four wireless receivers for use in more distant divisional headquarters at a cost of £25 each. These receivers are of a special type designed for picking up long distance messages.

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Experiments in the use of wireless have extended over ten years or more, and after numerous difficulties and disappointments, success has reached the stage when the Chief Constable (Mr G. C. Vaughan) feels that it can take its place as part of police work that is definitely giving service.

This week marks the beginning of a 24-hour day police wireless service. The main transmitter is at Wakefield and throughout the day wireless messages, in a special morse code, are being radiated to mobile units and divisional headquarters over the whole of the West Riding. Practical results have already been obtained.

Nearly every police car which not used for purely domestic purposes is fitted with a receiver and, within a short time, all police cars will be equipped. Messages radiated to the vehicles are readily picked up and amplified to loud-speaker strength, so that the driver or other occupant of a car can hear immediately and, decoding the information sent through, act on it at once.

The value of the service is considerable. Quick concentration men and inquiries can be effected in a crime area.

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The main transmitter at Wakefield is the centre of a wireless region in the North. These regions are being extended rapidly throughout the country and Wakefield will soon be the centre for the North region and will shortly be giving a wireless service to police forces throughout the North of England.

All motor patrol men have been instructed in the reading of the special morse which is radiated on short wave-length and classes are held at headquarters teach other men how the wireless service operates and the morse code that is being used. A special branch of the Constabulary now deals with the technical side of the service.