I was invited to the Redbridge unit who meet every Thursday night.
A typical evening starts with a parade where a member of the training staff inspects the cadets, on this particular night they had a visit from Inspector Adam Redgewell who is the co-ordinator for the Metropolitan Police Volunteer Police Cadets and he was invited to inspect the cadets.
The youngest cadet was 14 and the eldest 20. Their were18 cadets on parade looking very smart in their uniforms, being looked after by three Police officers.

I was particularly impressed by the discipline and respect the cadets
had for the Police officers who were running the unit. A team of 10 had just competed in the National police cadet competition at Hendon Police College and one of the cadets was asked to report to the unit on the highlights of the weekend. They appeared to have had a great time, competing and playing hard with not much sleep in between.

This was their first time and had qualified by taking part in a preliminary one day competition against other Metropolitan police cadet units and came 13th. They had to compete against units from all over the country as well as others from other London units. During the weekend they had to deal with Police work such as a mock traffic accident, an every day scenario in a training village, which led to an arrest and a court case where the cadets had to contend with real magistrates.

They also had a physical challenge of running 500 metres with riot
shields, which can be physically draining.

I was given the opportunity to speak to a selection of the cadets
who were keen to answer my questions. I asked one cadet why she had joined, she said she wanted to get away from hanging around on the streets and to do something challenging that was both fun and a sense of helping others, all the cadets had one eye on becoming a full time Police officer when they were old enough to join.

I asked them what their friends and relatives thought about them being Police cadets and they all said even the ones who ribbed them about it eventually came round to admiring them for what they were doing.

The uniforms are supplied by the local borough and the cadets paid £2 per week subscriptions. Cadets are expected to turn up to every meeting night and if they can’t make it they are expected to phone so that the Police staff are aware they are not coming.

The reason for this is so if a cadet leaves home and doesn’t arrive they would be immediately missed and would be looked for. The impression I got was that the Police look after the cadets welfare, thoroughly in every thing they do.

I left the meeting feeling that if more youngsters had the discipline
and respect that these cadets had we wouldn’t have the anti social
behaviour that tends to blight our society.

For general enquiries regarding the Volunteer Cadets please contact the co-ordinator Inspector Adam Redgwell on 020-7161-2652 or
e-mail Adam Redgwell VPC Coordinator