West Nuneaton welcomes Crime Fighting Team

West Nuneaton has a new Neighbourhood Crime Fighting Team that will deliver a new kind of community policing for the people living on the Camphill, Stockingford, Grove Farm, Galley Common and Manor beats.

West Nuneaton is one of three areas in Warwickshire piloting Neighbourhood Crime Fighting Teams on identified beats where there is a disproportionate amount of crime, nuisance and disorder. Teams are also are being trialed in Brownsover, Rugby and Brunswick, Leamington Spa.

The Nuneaton team, led by Sergeant Dean Reid, includes nine constables - six of them community beat officers with high visibility back up from a team of police community support officers. The team will focus on reducing crime and disorder and targeting persistent offenders in order to improve the quality of life of the people living in these areas.

In addition Camphill, which has been designated as a Priority Policing Area, attracting £50,000 Home Office Funding, will also benefit from an additional police officer seconded to the role of Community Co-ordinator.

Each beat in the Neighbourhood Crime Fighting Team area will have an identified community beat officer - PC Mick Woolerston (Camphill), PC Wesley Gladwiin and Rob Eliot (Manor) PC Paul Carruthers (Grove Farm), PC Amarjit Atwal (Galley Common) and PC Matt Bird (Stockingford) - but they will work as a team covering the whole area with PCs James Graham, Chris Smith Rob Elliot and Lee Kemp.

In addition four police community support officers, Steve Crowshaw, who is already the Camphill dedicated PCSO, Stephanie Norma, Manisha Pandya, Ian Sherwin and Ruth Mulvany will make up the team.

Nuneaton-based Inspector Neil Harrison, who has been responsible for coordinating the development of the Neighbourhood Crime Fighting Teams, said: “This is not a quick fix solution. The long term success will depend on a sustained and innovative approach. This is about police officers becoming part of the neighbourhood, having ownership of a designated area where they can re-engage with the local community and develop problem solving ideas to improve the quality of life for the people living in the area.”

But Insp Harrison wanted to make it clear that the dedicated team based in West Nuneaton were not there to work as reactive officers.

“Individual calls for assistance from the public will still be dealt with by officers working out of Nuneaton Police Station. This team is an additional resource and will have the time to develop strategies and plan operations to tackle local issues and prioritise where we focus our attention," he said.

Sergeant Reid, who joined Warwickshire Police in 1990, has spent most of his police service based in Nuneaton and Bedworth, although he started his career based at Warwick for the first year before moving the Nuneaton as a reactive officer.

He has also worked as a beat support officer in Nuneaton, worked on the Police Support Unit (PSU), spent 18 months with the drugs squad and is a trained vehicle examiner and also a family liaison officer.

In 2000 he moved to Bedworth on promotion to Sergeant where he has worked as Reactive Patrol Sergeant, Beat Support Sergeant and Community Beat Sergeant. He will be drawing on this experience in his new role.

“I like the idea of being able to take a team approach to solving a problem, rather than just having a single officer such as the CBO trying to come up with all the answers. I have a team of experienced officers, who each have specialist areas of expertise and we will be able to draw on this bank of experience to find solutions and reduce crime.“

Although still part of the larger Neighbourhood Crime Fighting Team, Nuneaton-based Sergeant Wayne Cooke has been seconded to the Home Office Policing Standards Unit, working within Camp Hill to undertake a one-year project which is funded by the Home Office.

Sgt Cooke is a Home Office trained crime prevention and architectural liaison officer and with his previous experience of working in the Community Safety Unit will be engaging with the community and partner agencies to focus on crime, fear of crime and quality of life concerns.

He says he is looking forward to his new challenge: “The funding from the Home Office will give me the opportunity to work more closely with the local community to further enhance partnerships to tackle crime and address quality of life issues. A lot of excellent work is clearly ongoing in Camphill and my role will be to support this process as well as seek new ways to address the concerns of local residents.

"The project aims to address issues of priority crime, signal crimes like damage and graffiti, nuisance motorcycle incidents, and to consider truancy and the links to crime as well as other matters of community concern. We will be forming a Problem Orientated Partnership with the community and partner agencies to identify the issues, offer focus and action on the ground with due regard for sustainability beyond the life of the project," he says.

The focussed piece of work will aim to be innovative and challenging to all partner agencies working within the target area, seeking to identify good practices for the benefit of the wider community.