Wiltshire Police, formerly known as Wiltshire Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Wiltshire (including the Borough of Swindon) in South West England. The force serves 722,000 people over an area of . In terms of officer numbers, it is the second smallest force in the United Kingdom (after the City of London Police). Since July 2022, the force has been under enhanced scrutiny ("special measures") by His Majesty's Inspectorate, after it was rated 'inadequate' in three areas: responding to the public, protecting vulnerable people and making use of its resources. History Before the 1830s, policing in Wiltshire was the responsibility of petty and parish constables, who were supervised by magistrates. This was largely ineffective as they were unpaid and untrained, and so independent and private forces such as the Devizes Prosecution Society emerged, and these did not immediately disappear when professional police forces came into being. The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 standardised the structure and responsibilities of borough councils in England and Wales, including requiring they provide a professional police force. The Act applied both to new boroughs formed on application in large industrial cities, and to 178 already incorporated boroughs, including Salisbury (officially known as New Sarum until 2009). The New Sarum Police was founded in 1836, but was disbanded and reformed only two years later as the Salisbury City Police – the first modern police force to operate in Wiltshire. In the same year, a detachment of London's Metropolitan Police, which had been established in 1829, was called in to control riots. Social unrest in the 1830s led to the appointment in 1836 of a royal commission on policing in the counties, which led to the County Police Act 1839. This established a framework and some government funding for magistrates in a county to form a police force based on London's Metropolitan Police, though there was no requirement for them to do so. In the same year the Act passed, groups of labourers had rioted across Wiltshire over the price of food and the introduction of new farm equipment, starting fires and destroying machinery. As a result, Wiltshire became the first county to use the provisions of the Act to form a county-level police force, with Wiltshire Constabulary being established on Wednesday 13 November 1839 at The Bear Hotel, Devizes, mere hours before the second (Gloucestershire). Wiltshire Constabulary's first chief constable was