West Midlands Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England.

Covering an area with nearly 2.9 million inhabitants, which includes the cities of Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and also the Black Country; the force is made up of 7,442 Police Officers, supported by 3,029 Police Staff, 527 Special Constables and 676 Police Community Support Officers (PCSO) - with these 11,147 employees, this makes it the second-largest force in England behind the Metropolitan Police and third-largest force in the United Kingdom after the aforementioned force and Police Scotland.

The force is currently led by Chief Constable Dave Thompson. The force area is divided into ten Local Policing Units (LPUs), each being served by four core policing teams - Response, Neighbourhood, Investigation and Community Action & Priority (CAPT) - with the support of a number of specialist crime teams. These specialist teams include CID, traffic and a firearms unit who provide a twenty four hour availability to attend reported incidents involving the use of firearms and knives.

West Midlands may refer to:

In places

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In other uses

West Midlands is a constituency of the European Parliament. It is represented by seven MEPs using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation. In 2009, the constituency had been reduced to six seats, but also elected a "virtual MEP" who took her seat in the Parliament when the Treaty of Lisbon came into effect. The constituency was also previously represented by seven MEPs prior to the 2009 election.

Boundaries

The constituency corresponds to the West Midlands region of England, comprising the ceremonial counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire.

History

It was formed as a result of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, replacing a number of single-member constituencies. These were Birmingham East, Birmingham West, Coventry and North Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, Worcestershire and South Warwickshire, and parts of Peak District, Staffordshire East and Derby, and Staffordshire West and Congleton.

The West Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It covers the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley, Solihull, Walsall and West Bromwich. The city of Coventry is also located within the West Midlands county, but is separated from the conurbation to the west by several miles of green belt.

The region is geographically diverse, from the urban central areas of the conurbation to the rural western counties of Shropshire and Herefordshire which border Wales. The longest river in the UK, the River Severn, traverses the region southeastwards, flowing through the county towns of Shrewsbury and Worcester, and the Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Staffordshire is home to the industrialised Potteries conurbation, including the city of Stoke-on-Trent, and the Staffordshire Moorlands area, which borders the southeastern Peak District National Park near Leek. The region also encompasses five Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Wye Valley, Shropshire hills, Cannock Chase, Malvern Hills, and parts of the Cotswolds. Warwickshire is home to the town of Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of the writer William Shakespeare. The West Midlands and Greater London are the only regions of England and of the United Kingdom which are landlocked.