On a small patch of grassland, at the corner of The Mall and Horse Guards Road, stands the National Police Memorial. It was the first memorial to be placed in St James's Park in over a century.
On April 17, 1984, WPC Yvonne Fletcher was fatally wounded by a gunshot, fired from an unknown gunman in the Libyan Embassy, on St James's Square. Her murder sparked an eleven-day siege of the Embassy which, when it ended, resulted in the expulsion of those inside the building and the severing of diplomatic ties between the United Kingdom and Libya.
Following her murder the film director Michael Winner founded the Police Memorial Trust. At first the Trust erected small monuments at the locations where Police Officers had lost their lives, but they wanted something more.
From the mid 1990s they lobbied and raised funds for a permanent memorial to all officers who had died in the course of their duties. Michael Winner gifted £500,000 to the fund, stating, "Memorials to soldiers, sailors and airmen are commonplace, but the police fight a war with no beginning and no end."
