New Hereford police chief aims for crime reassurance

3:00pm Monday 7th January 2013 in News By Bill Tanner

Superintendent Ivan Powell Superintendent Ivan Powell

HEREFORDSHIRE'S new city police chief says county crime figures have been improving year-on-year.

Superintendent Ivan Powell, who has come back to the county as divisional commander after time as West Mercia Police’s chief detective, has told the Hereford Times that a litany of low-level offending makes up much of what his officers deal with day-to-day.

He says Herefordshire is no better or – more importantly – no worse than any other county of similar size.

He accepts it's up to him to take a lead in presenting the evidence to make the case against any perceptions suggesting otherwise.

“Crime figures have been improving here year-on-year for some time,” he said.

“What we need running parallel to that improvement is a good understanding of what those specific fears and perceptions within communities are about – and outline what we’re doing, or can do, to dispel them.”

Comments(7)

fmrbill says...
4:21pm Mon 7 Jan 13

or could it be as per the sunday papers state,people arent bothering to report, as they have no faith in police. Which is understandable when you see what they up to, i.e Hillsborough, Pleb story, and today some DCI from the met in court ref alledging selling stories to papers

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Vic Vomitello says...
7:12pm Mon 7 Jan 13

Of course the police are not supposed to give favours to their mates through membership of their local freemason's lodge, instead the police commissioner is allowed blatantly to shoehorn his mate into the deputy police commissioner role at £50k a year. The new politicised police commissioning regime has no hope of gaining public trust after that shameful act.

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RogerLFC says...
8:01pm Mon 7 Jan 13

Having read this article I flicked over to the West Mercia Police website. I only had to scroll 4 articles down on today's news to find a story about an attempted robbery in Leominster. The website doesn't update much at weekends so I then scrolled to last Friday and strangely I found an appeal for witnesses about a random early hours assault in Hereford. These stories then get replicated on the HT website and maybe other news websites and the fear of crime slowly perpetuates itself! Fuelled at source by the Police! Crime is low in The Shire but it is random and can happen at any moment so I definitely don't think it is very safe out there!

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littlewhitebull says...
9:42am Tue 8 Jan 13

Crime is very real to those people unfortunate enough to be subjected to any illegal activity. Some people find their lives completely changed, or turned upside down by the activities of a few in society. The police have a difficult job, made even more challenging by the form filling and challenges imposed by silly politicians and do-gooders. I agree that some members of the police have created distrust of the police by the public. Yet, I think there are probably still a high proportion of police officers who do a good job in the most difficult of times.

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silentbull says...
1:58pm Tue 8 Jan 13

littlewhitebull wrote:
Crime is very real to those people unfortunate enough to be subjected to any illegal activity. Some people find their lives completely changed, or turned upside down by the activities of a few in society. The police have a difficult job, made even more challenging by the form filling and challenges imposed by silly politicians and do-gooders. I agree that some members of the police have created distrust of the police by the public. Yet, I think there are probably still a high proportion of police officers who do a good job in the most difficult of times.
FULLY AGREE with this, what needs to be done though is the police having to have to do 'less' paperwork and given 'more' time to walk the streets so they get to know who's who and what's what (if you know what i mean)
And i mean proper Police

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WYSIATI says...
6:15pm Tue 8 Jan 13

Getting policing right is not that easy - nor is it simple to say more police equals less crime.

The labour candidate for police commissioner made some good points about making sure that the police really spend time locally and, as silentbull says, getting to know and be known in the community. The alternative - which we've seen far too much of - is response policing where high tech, possibly armed, maybe heavy handed police units sit about till there's a call then come in mob handed. Looks very impressive - but leads to alienation, can lead to escalation and make matters far worse.

So Dixon of Dock Green may not be real but I think he's on to something that we ought to think about and anything that stops us slipping (further) down the slope of a police force that has no real connection to people is a good thing.

He also said, and I've heard it from others too, that the CSOs (ridiculed as they are by some) have actually made a huge difference at the grass roots level.

Sadly it's far too important an issue to put in the hands of one elected individual (and his mates) and there's a lot of vested interest in the police that needs to be tackled too and everyone should keep their eyes on the end result and look past the narrow self interests.

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dodger3 says...
7:11am Thu 10 Jan 13

Its been said for years, 'we need more officers on the beat'. CSO,s have filled this criteria to a degree, but I believe their numbers may be cut, they are easier to get rid of than Police officers.

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