Pete retires – finally!

17 December 2024

When Pete Roberts told his tool fitter father he wanted to be a police officer he was instead advised to learn a trade.

But Pete was not to be put off and, having joined the Cadets at 16, he is finally leaving the Force, retiring with a total of 54 years’ service under his belt, most recently providing essential administration support for the Derbyshire Police Federation branch.

He admits that there have been very few low times in his career, explaining: “I have been very, very lucky during my time with the Force. I am going to miss it.”

Nevertheless, he feels it’s time for him to head off into retirement.

 

Pete Roberts in the Derbyshire Police Federation office.

 

In his latest role, he has job shared with Jo Johnson, with each working 24 hours a week, Jo Monday to Wednesday and Pete Wednesday to Friday. Pete first joined the Fed office when he retired from the Force in 2008 and initially worked alongside Sue Fergusson who oversaw the Federation’s move into its current office in Coney Green from its previous base in South Normanton before retiring herself.

Pete joined the Derbyshire Police Cadets in 1970 when he was 16½ and was slightly delayed in joining as a regular when he had to go back to college to re-sit his English O-Level exam.

Training

But once he had made it into the Force he never looked back. He did his initial training at Pannal Ash in Harrogate, travelling there on 1 January  1973 and getting paid double time for the Bank Holiday before starting his training that same afternoon. He was stationed at St Mary’s Gate, the old Derby West, some of which now forms part of Derbyshire Dales, which he said was a real ‘old-fashioned’ police base.

“We would have four shifts, and each shift would have an inspector, two sergeants, around 10 PCs and that didn’t include the beat officers or detectives,” Pete recalls.

Then, in 1980, he moved onto the newly formed PSU shifts , still based at St Mary’s Gate, working 8am to 4pm or 4pm to midnight shifts during the week and 6pm to 2am shifts on Fridays and Saturday with two sergeants and an inspector. The PSU call-out would involve three transit vans, with three sergeants and 30 PCs.

 

Pete with (left to right) Jo Johnson, Kirsty Bunn (branch secretary),
Keith Chambers (branch chair) and Helen Gallear (Fed rep).

 

“We got involved in a huge variety of jobs, covering the weekend city transits, football matches, raids and the like and the fully resourced PSU capability meant the Force had officers available to deal with incidents without having to take people off section. 

From PSU, he then spent some time working in custody at Full Street, the forerunner of St Mary’s Wharf  as a gaoler, as it was before the Force had custody sergeants and confesses that, after two years there,  he then almost had to be taken ‘kicking and screaming’ when he was transferred to Chaddesden (Chad) in 1984.

“I didn’t want to go at all, I had really enjoyed my time working in custody and Chad just didn’t appeal,” Pete says.

Career

However, he soon grew to love the posting. Working under Inspector Ivor Colpus, who was setting up a new response/neighbourhood team and worked on a shift , led by the late Sergeant Kevin Wilson. In 1988 he passed his advanced driving course and worked the Chaddesden response car.

Towards the end of his time at Chad, he embarked on his Federation career.

Pete, a career-long PC, explains: “Sergeant Martin Critchley identified that I might make a good Federation workplace representative so initially I was the deputy to the fifth rep who had county-wide cover. Then when the Derby rep John Dutton retired I became the D Division rep.”

In 2000, he moved to the new St Mary’s Wharf HQ where, on the request of the then Divisional Commander,Tony Hurrell, he visited all shifts at all stations within D Division,  to discuss and gather views on the proposed changes to the format of the division.   

Pete was then tasked by Inspector Ray Gibson and Chief Supt Hurrell, with setting up the Process Unit, at St Mary’s Wharf. The unit, made up of very experienced officers all with 20 years’ service or more, was formed to deal with the hand-over prisoners, charging and submitting the files, among other tasks that came their way, taking the strain off the response teams.

Retire

At the same time, his Federation role was developing too. He became deputy branch secretary in 2004 moving to the South Normanton Federation office and then secretary in September 2007.

“It never crossed my mind when I came to retire as a police officer that I would get a job in the Federation office but, with the demands of running the Group Insurance Scheme and other pressures, extra admin support was needed and the then chair, Duncan Davis, and the new secretary, Ian Godfrey, asked if I was interested. You could say the rest is history,” says Pete.

In his time in the Federation office he has worked with six chairs – Duncan, Dennis Murphy, Mandy Trotman, Mark Pickard, Tony Wetton and now Keith Chambers. He also worked alongside the secretaries Ian, Adam Galley and Kirsty Bun.

He has seen huge changes in policing throughout his career, citing some of the data protection provisions as being a hindrance to officers but the emergence of new technology as a positive development.

“Sadly, though, I think there have been more negatives than positives. It’s hard for officers to police properly these days; there are just too many restrictions on them and something’s got to give. We are suffering due to a lack of experienced officers, we are a very bottom heavy service right now and some sergeants who are still young in service themselves. To me, policing needs to get back to basics. We have a lot of people in specialist squads and that leaves us with very few officers to fall back on. I feel quite sorry for some of the younger generation of officers coming in to policing now,” Pete said.

That aside, he says the one thing he will really miss is the camaraderie: “It really is one big family; I shall miss that.”

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