Talk:Norwell Roberts

Latest comment: 6 months ago by Khamba Tendal

Removed section

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I removed a section that had zero references, but I'm placing it here until proper citations can be found.


<==> Legacy </==>

Roberts is the Metropolitan Police's first black police officer, first black member of the CID, the first black officer to serve 30 years, the first black undercover officer and the first black police officer to be awarded the Queens Police Medal. He is still called upon for interviews in the media for his comments concerning ethnic minorities, police history, or his career and experiences as the first black police officer in the Metropolitan Police.

Roberts also ran an attendance centre in Mill Hill for young offenders on weekends. Roberts has lectured at Universities schools and colleges around the UK. He has given presentations at the Police Special Senior Command Course for high-ranking Officers at Bramshill in Hampshire. Roberts has assisted with diversity training for the Metropolitan Police. He once did charity work with Gary Numan, including dressing up a Father Christmas and handed out presents to over 50 disadvantaged children, for nearly 40 years. He financed the transportation to Blackbushe airport in Hampshire where the children were treated to the arrival of Father Christmas from the ‘North Pole’.

Roberts is featured in a question of popular board game Trivial Pursuit.

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I think Roberts, though notable and rightly honoured, is more properly described as, in 1967, 'the first black officer to join the Metropolitan Police since the Second World War', which is what this Black History Month article correctly says. https://issuu.com/blackhistorymonth/docs/black_history_month_magazine_2021/s/13576493 There are photographs extant of a black constable on patrol in Chislehurst in late 1910 and of a black constable driving one of the early London police cars, an Austin Seven, in the 1920s. We don't know their names, but they certainly served, and there may have been black officers before that too. Black people were far from unknown in Britain before the Empire Windrush docked in 1948, and there were even a few black paratroopers in 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem in 1944, including a noted sniper, Cpl Charles Bolton (born Maidstone, Kent, 1923), who fought at Arnhem Bridge itself and survived as a PoW. Khamba Tendal (talk) 17:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)Reply