Further to the request of the committee at their last meeting. Chief Superintendent Coltman of the Harlow Police has been invited to engage with the committee in a question and answer session on Policing issues for the District.
Minutes:
The Chairman welcomed and introduced Superintendent Steve Graysmark of the Harlow Police who was standing in for Chief Superintendent Coltman who, due to other commitments could not attend. The Chairman explained that Superintendent Graysmark was there at the invitation of the Committee to engage in a question and answer session on Policing issues for the District. In his opening statement Superintendent Graysmark informed the meeting that a new Chief Superintendent would be starting soon, a Mr Andy Evans, who has a very good reputation.
Q: People are encountering a lot of difficulties in contracting the Local Community Team in Chigwell, and are not even getting call backs from messages that they leave, can you help?
A: if you give me your details afterwards, I will look into that. We have a very good team in Chigwell, doing excellent work in the area.
Q: Theydon Bois has installed a CCTV system recently and get regular requests to download them to disks, but the Police are reluctant to pick them up and so we are left with a stack of DVD’s. We have also installed a broadband connection to link up the CCTV feed with the Police, where they can download the images at the Police Station in Ongar.
A: They should off course pick them up; and I will have to research into the capabilities they have in receiving and storing you CCTV footage via a broadband connection.
Q: We have heard that Community Officers are to be put into vehicles for patrols, but we would like them to continue to patrol on foot.
A: I can assure you that Community Officers will stay on foot. Although they do use buses and tubes to get them to their patrol area, they will not use cars to get them around their patrol areas.
The Joint Chief Executive (Community) added that this is a large rural district with little public transport in places. They cannot use Police vehicles but we are discussing the use of smart cars to get them to their patrol areas, we are also exploring the use of Community Transport Busses to move them around.
Q: There are a lot of cars parking on pavements, I have raised this with the police but they say it is of a low priority.
A: It is a low priority, we can have a blitz on people who do this but an area will need to be identified and then prioritised. I will take your details at the end of the meeting.
Q: What is the current situation in the North and West part of the district over resources; and can officers stay in one location over a long period of time so that they can build up some expertise and local knowledge?
A: I agree that it’s better for officers to stay in one place for a long time, but I can’t stop people moving especially if they want to progress their careers.
It used to be that Epping and Harlow were on different communication channels so Harlow could miss calls (even if they are closer) so someone from Epping would have to respond. A call now goes out on both channels.
There are never enough police officers, the Met. takes a lot of staff, but despite this, our detection rate is going up. We target ‘hot spots’ which helps and also do work with prolific offenders, and have recently targeted the top 23, offenders trying to change their behaviour.
We try to target our officers more efficiently, although we would like more police officers, central office says that we have more officers now than we have ever had.
Q: Regarding the enforcements of speed limits, just how do we get mobile speed cameras sent to our areas.
A: The traffic police are the people to ask. There has to some sort of criteria on their allocation, every village wants a camera but we can only put them in priority areas.
The Head of Environmental Services commented that the district has a speed camera partnership and will try to establish what the criteria are and make it available with the minutes of this meeting. Paul Hardy can come to the next meeting to answer any questions that may arise.
Q: It is alleged that there is a lot of crime committed by travellers and that the police are reluctant to go and search their sites – is this true?
A: We do respond but need a large force to do this - before we go into a traveller’s camp we need to do a risk assessment.
Q: Are there still opportunities for civilian observers to go on patrol with officers?
A: There is no reason why we cannot do this. This is mostly done for young people who are looking to join us, but we can do this for local councillors etc.
Q: We had a presentation about anti social behaviour at Theydon Bois, by the British Transport Police, who said that they worked in close liaison with the police. Can you elaborate?
A: Yes we are developing a good partnership with them. We recently had a joint operation at Debden College, which was very successful. We have also done something similar at Harlow College.
We are upbeat about the future as we have a new Chief Constable who is meant to be very good and had raised the detection rate in his old division by over 30%. It is tough to get crime down in this area, but we will get there.
At this point the Chairman brought this section of the meeting to a close, thanking Superintendent Graysmark for his valued contribution in answering the questions raised.