More visible policing, rural crime and a drive to tackle abuse and harassment against women have been identified as priorities for police in Norfolk.
A new police, crime and community safety plan sets out the details of what Norfolk’s Police and Crime Commissioner Giles Orpen-Smellie expects Norfolk Constabulary to deliver over the next two years.
It has been developed following a public consultation which asked people about what they saw as priorities for policing and safety and with the input of partners, including Norfolk chief constable Paul Sanford.
Mr Orpen-Smellie, who was elected last May, said: “I went out to the public with a set of ideas and the public were not shy in coming back with their comments.
“The two themes that came out particularly is that the public want to see visible policing and, given that 60pc of the population in Norfolk lives in rural areas, they wanted to see a greater emphasis on rural crime.”
People want to see more police on their streets
A desire for people to see more police in communities was one of the most common requests.
But pressures on police to investigate more ‘behind closed doors’ crimes like domestic abuse and cybercrime meant officers were being kept off the streets, he said.
His plan tries to balance the fact that one in four crimes reported to police in Norfolk are linked to domestic abuse while the public wants to see bobbies on the beat tackling local issues.
“There is an expectation gap because home secretaries going all the way back to Theresa May in 2010 have been very clear to police that their job is to tackle crime but so much crime happens behind closed doors,” he said.
“A quarter of crime in Norfolk is domestic abuse, 36pc of violent crime is actually connected to that domestic abuse, so there was, particularly during austerity, an inevitability that policing would disappear out of public view.
“But the public made it very clear they want some of the lower harm issues being dealt with. They wanted anti-social behaviour being tackled, speeding motorists, particularly in rural villages, to be tackled.”
Mr Orpen-Smellie said part of this would be a greater emphasis on specific rural crimes.
“The distinction I make is you might have domestic abuse happening in a rural area but we don’t treat it as a rural crime," he said.
"Agricultural crime from my perspective is the problems that our farming communities suffer from particularly like hare coursing, haystack burning, theft of agricultural machinery, most notably for arable farmers the theft of GPS systems that is often carried out by organised crime groups.”
'I get told the most terrible stories by women'
The report comes amid big rises in violent and sex offences. Last year saw 33,255 across the county, 3,333, 68pc higher than in 2017, according to Home Office data.
The PCC said the rises are being driven by more reporting of domestic violence and abuse and harassment of women and girls.
“Everywhere I go I get told the most terrible stories from women such as how they have been groped in pubs,” he added.
“I think our statistics are going to increase because police officers and our supporting partners that work in their environment are better attuned to listening and acting.
“For example we had 1,020 rapes in the last calendar year not all of which happened last year a lot of them were much older but people are now coming forward things.”
For the first time, the crime plan brings together priorities within the Norfolk Community Safety Partnership’s Safer Norfolk Plan.
Mr Orpen-Smellie, who hopes to build on his plan if re-elected in 2024, said: “A lot of the societal issues that the community safety partnership deal with spill over into policing and crime.
“Police are the first responders to a crime incident but you have then got the whole costs of investigating, prosecuting in courts and eventually the prison and probation service.
“If we can get upstream of that and prevent crime in the first place then so much the better.”
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