Delivering Protection
Delivering Protection Contents
Introduction
This theme is integral to the way we police our county. All our people come to work to protect our communities from harm and will, wherever possible, prevent its occurrence. However where, for whatever reason, this is not possible we will take positive action so to minimise its impact. Adopting a risk-assessed approach, we continue to challenge the way we work and look to innovate new and/or better ways of preventing harm. The ways in which we deliver protection are influenced by our Control Strategy, which identifies the primary threats facing our county over the lifecycle of this Plan. Outlined below are the initiatives that we believe are fundamental to our ability to realise our published priorities and deliver more protection to the people who live in, work in and travel through our county.
Priority Policing Areas
We introduced Priority Policing Areas last year as a way of focussing our resources in three key geographical locations (covering parts of Leamington, Nuneaton and Rugby), which suffer disproportionate levels of harm, thereby enabling us to reduce the levels of recorded criminality in comparison to low crime areas. We recognise that if we are to deliver the protection these communities deserve this will require us to adopt a long-term commitment to work in and with these communities to develop, introduce and establish the range of sustainable solutions needed.
Encouragingly, twelve months on from their introduction we have not only seen the gap between those area’s which suffer a disproportionate level of harm made smaller, in relation to certain crime types, but also for all crime recorded in the Leamington and Nuneaton priority areas. Despite these early successes we remain committed to driving this initiative forward by adopting an ‘holistic’ approach to reducing crime and disorder and improve the quality of life experienced by not only tackling reported crime but also the factors that drive it including the abuse of drugs and alcohol, local drug dealing and the availability of stolen goods.
Offender Management
We recognise that a relatively small number of people are responsible for the majority of harm occurring in our communities, whether this be due to the seriousness of their criminality, the regularity with which they offend or the impact of their criminal and/or anti-social behaviour. In response to this challenge we have developed a risk-based approach to proactively target these ‘Harm Causers’. By using the full range of policing tactics that are available to us we plan to disrupt and prevent their criminal and anti-social activities. A fundamental part of this approach will continue to be to identify opportunities where we can remove ‘Harm Causers’ from our communities by securing convictions for all/any offence that the evidence available will support.
Family Centred Intervention
In Warwickshire (as elsewhere in the country) a comparatively small number of families are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the workload of many different Agencies. These families experience multiple problems and need significant amounts of support, sometimes for a long period of time. Although schools, housing services, children’s services, health services, the police and others concerned with the criminal justice system may all have regular contact with the same family, this does not mean that all of the family’s needs are being identified, met or coordinated effectively.
‘Family Centred Intervention’ represents a new way of working with harm causing and resource-demanding families. We hope it will challenge and change their behaviour and attitude towards crime and anti-social behaviour whilst providing the support they require to raise aspirations and improve the quality of life.
It is anticipated that this initiative will enable us and our partners to accurately assess, using a harms risk matrix, the level of harms they cause, their required needs, and the level of support necessary to ensure cohesive and confident communities. The type and range of support provided to a family will be based upon their outcome against the harms risk matrix. Interventions will be tailored to suit the identified needs of the family and can range from a response from an appropriate single agency through to specialist support in the form of a Family Intervention Project (FIP); whereby a key skilled worker co-ordinates a multi-agency intervention by working intensively with all members of the family.
This approach provides a unique opportunity for Agencies to work together, pool resources and effort to address the most complex and challenging needs faced by these individuals, families, and communities.
Violent Extremism - The Way Forward
Prevent is a key strand of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy, known as Contest. Its primary objective is to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism. Consisting of five key strands this strategy aims to:
- Challenge the violent extremist ideology and support mainstream voices
- Disrupt those who promote violent extremism and support institutions where they are active
- Support individuals who are being targeted and recruited to the cause of violent extremism
- Increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism
- Address the grievances that violent extremists are exploiting
Local delivery is key. Preventing violent extremism begins in our communities. We all have a responsibility to identify and protect vulnerable people and to limit the opportunities these extremists have to express their views. We can only achieve this by improving the way we engage with our communities and by encouraging them to provide us with community-related intelligence. We have recognised that this represents an area in which we need to focus our efforts. We are therefore providing our Safer Neighbourhood teams with Intelligence and Community Engagement training. This will enable them to identify existing gaps in our approach to community engagement and to develop appropriate solutions to address them.
Road Policing
During 2009 27 people were killed and 282 people seriously injured on Warwickshire’s roads, which is a reduction of 16 fatalities and a reduction of 23 people seriously injured when compared with the previous year. Despite the significant progress we have made our Control Strategy continues to identify this as an issue requiring further attention. Our vision commits us to protect our communities from the risk of being killed or seriously injured on our roads and working with our partners we want to make further improvements on recent reductions. However, we also seek the public’s support for our approach to roads policing. Our challenge is to: reduce the number of casualties; deny criminals the use of our roads and; improve public confidence.
Working as part of Warwickshire Road Safety Partnership we will continue to reduce road-related casualties by: enforcing the law; educating drivers and; re-engineering roads. Our approach to enforcement is based on four factors, which acknowledge the greater risk posed by drivers who: drive at excessive speed; fail to wear a seat belt; drive under the influence of drink or drugs or; are distracted, primarily through using a mobile phone when driving. We will also target those road users who through the way they drive present a greater risk of harm to others. We will focus our attention on intervening where people show a flagrant and intentional disregard for the law by using their vehicles in a criminal and/or anti-social way.
Whilst people are generally supportive of the positive action we take against anyone who drives whilst under the influence of drink or drugs or use a mobile phone whilst driving they expect us to be more flexible when dealing with speed-related issues. Excessive speed remains a major factor in road accidents, however by assessing the impact of a person’s driving and the risks posed to others we will balance the need to adopt a firm approach with the discretionary use of our powers. We will implement a range of initiatives that challenge, educate and change inappropriate driver behaviour.
We recognise that the way we police our roads is a crucial factor in people’s confidence about policing locally. We are committed to ensuring that our approach to roads policing positively impacts on the relationships between Warwickshire Police and the communities we serve, whilst making the roads of Warwickshire safer to travel.
Serious and Organised Crime
In response to a HMIC recommendation in 2007 we established a Serious and Organised Crime team, which is responsible for disrupting and dismantling Organised Crime Groups causing harm in our county. This team:
- Proactively target crime groups operating regionally, nationally and internationally
- Provide specialist advice to covert policing operations
- Work with other agencies including Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA), Department of Business Innovation and Skills and other police forces
- Providing a reactive capability in support of major/serious criminal investigations
We are currently working with our West Midlands regional policing colleagues SOCA, HMRC and UKBA to develop collaborative ways of investigating serious organised crime occurring within the West Midlands region and involving two or more participating organisations. When these criteria have been satisfied, resources are allocated from the most appropriate organisations. Known as Operation Viper this pilot has already delivered significant benefits, for example in response to a target to arrest and charge fifteen of the highest harm causers from organised crime groups we significantly exceeded it arresting and charging over 40 people. In response to the progress we have made in this area our focus is now to reduce the overall identified threat posed by Organised Crime Groups operating in our county by 15%.
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