Your views needed to shape police online memorial

20 October 2022

Nicky Ryan is calling on colleagues to help the Police Arboretum Memorial Trust to develop a pioneering new tribute website for fallen officers.

The Police Federation Welsh lead has appealed to officers in Wales to take a few minutes to complete a survey which will be used by the trust to shape their digital memorial.

Nicky said: “This new website will be a virtual companion to the UK Police Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. It means that family, friends, and colleagues of fallen officers will be able to pay their respects from wherever they are.

“The website will have feature things like interviews with family, friends and colleagues, personal photographs, and tributes. It should be really special, but in order to make the project a success the trust needs to gather our feedback and ideas, so I really hope colleagues and members of the public will take part in the survey.

“At the same time, we are also working with the Police Roll of Honour Trust to try to establish a police memorial in Cardiff to recognise all those officers from the four forces of Wales who have given their lives in serving their communities.”

The proposed new memorial for Welsh officers.

The trust funded the physical police memorial at the Staffordshire site and sees a digital memorial as the next step. Those accessing the website would also see an ‘on this day’ tribute which highlights the names of officers who died on a particular day and search for an officer by name, force, date of death and rank.

The chair of the Police Arboretum Memorial Trustees, Martin Hewitt, said: “Working with our partner, the Police Roll of Honour Trust, the digital memorial will give visitors access to the records of almost 5,000 police officers who have dedicated their lives to policing, from as far back as the Bow Street Runners in 1749.

“However, we need the help of the service, the wider policing family and the general public to help us develop the next stage. We want to hear from you about what you would like to see on the digital memorial and how you and visitors may wish to use it.”

People can participate and contribute to the consultation process by completing an online survey.