Significant improvement in reducing crime

Warwickshire Police achieves significant improvement in reducing crime

The Police Performance Monitors 2003/2004, published yesterday by the Home Office, indicate that Warwickshire Police has made significant improvements in reducing crime. The report measures and compares the performance of the 43 police forces in England and Wales over a number of indicators including reducing and investigating crime and plays an important role in keeping the public informed of their force’s development.

Commenting on the report which covers the twelve-month period up to March 2004, Acting Deputy Chief Constable Derek Cake said

"Compared to the same period last year, we are delighted to have made a 9.1% improvement in reducing crime and are continuing to build on this."

There are a number of reasons for this reduction, including the introduction of Smartwater to more parts of the community.

Mr Cake added

"We are also pleased to report that last year we performed exceptionally well on vehicle crime, exceeding our 5-year HMIC target and producing a 14.4% reduction. This means, figures indicate 1,219 fewer vehicles were targeted by offenders during the year to March 2004."

"The introduction of a number of targeted operations made a significant contribution and these are continuing this year. Operation Gamut involving partnership work with hotel and golf car parks in the south of the county and an operational plan, which has been targeting the top 10 hotspot sites across the rural community in the North."

"The Force continues to concentrate resources in hotspot areas of crime. As a result, officers from all departments work one Friday or Saturday night per month and in some areas this has more than doubled the visible police presence. This combined with a 26.8% improvement in the number of working days lost per year for police officers and police staff has dramatically improved resource availability."

"It is not all good news however, and there are always areas where we can improve our service to the public" explained Derek.

"This year we have set ourselves the task of investing heavily in bringing more offenders to justice and a commitment to improve the quality of service to callers and enhancing public satisfaction. These are long term initiatives and we have already demonstrated our ability to reduce crime in many areas and improve our detection rates. We are confident that we will achieve these goals."

John Rennie, Chair of Warwickshire Police Authority said

"I am delighted with the figures which have been published today. We were aware of the great improvements, of course, but it is great to have the figures confirmed and it is an indication of how hard all our officers have worked over this period of time."

Please click Police Performance Monitoring 2003/04 to view the full Home Office report or Warwickshire for the Performance Monitoring Reports for Warwickshire.