The following countries have volunteer officers who perform police duties in a similar manner to UK Special Constables: U.S.A, Canada, South Africa, Germany,
Netherlands, Finland, Bermuda, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. By far the largest of these is the U.S.A. with 350,000 volunteer officers therefore I will describe their structure.
At Federal level in the US
you have the F.B.I, DEA and U.S. Marshals Service, at State level there is Highway Patrol, State Troopers, State Police and Texas Rangers. At County level there are Sheriff’s Department and City Marshals, and at City
level there are Municipal Police, Metropolitan Police, Precinct Constables and City Police. In addition Parks, Transit, Airports, Harbours, Colleges, Universities and Hospitals all have their own police departments.
Each state uses some of these titles and most departments use volunteers known as Reserve, Special or Volunteer Officers.
First select the state and then county that you wish to make contact with or visit, in
general contact at Federal level would be very difficult to arrange. A detailed map of the U.S.A. will usually show the county boundary from which you can find the name of that department, and then locate the name of
cities within that county. (In the U.S.A. what we would refer to as a town is called a city).
Having made a list of likely places you then need access to the Internet to look for information on the relevant
departments. Some good directory sites to visit for volunteer departments are:
www.officer.com/agencies.htm www.digitallattice.bc.ca/res_prog.html www.azsecurity.com/pdlist.html
Most Internet
websites will indicate if the department have volunteer officers and some have been established by the volunteers themselves. Take a look at:
www.ips.net/ccreserves/index.html www.lasd.org/reserve/index.html www.kruppatech.com/volunteer
Having located a department most give an e-mail address or fax number to contact them, or an address to write to.
When contacting them for the first time give as much detail as you can on your own force, including their Internet site address, and your age, length of service etc. A lot of US volunteers will not have heard of
‘Special Constables’ so explain what you are!
If you intend visiting a US department whilst on holiday find out what they have prepared for your visit in advance. US volunteers are a very welcoming group of
people, if you turn up in Hawaiian shorts and sweatshirt when they take you to meet the Chief of Police you might be a little embarrassed. If they suggest you bring your uniform you must get authority from your Chief
Constable to take it, that way you can explain how you came back minus your helmet!
Be very careful about taking handcuffs and batons, airlines are very sensitive about them in luggage. It is most important
that you take suitable gifts for your hosts, your force plaque should be presented to the most senior person you are introduced to. US departments all have shoulder patches and metal shields which they will be keen to
give you. It is useful if you can take a supply of cap badges and SC+Crown to give in exchange.
I always take along several sets of my forces recruiting literature for Specials along with the force newspaper
and of course copies of Special Beat. Do be prepared to talk authoritatively on your forces organisation, policing plan, crime statistics and Specials training. They are always interested to hear how volunteers operate
in other countries.
Once friendships have been made, e-mail makes it easy to keep in touch to exchange ideas etc. You will find that the methods of policing and problems of volunteer officers in other
countries are remarkably similar to those of Specials in the UK.
