Special Investigation | Fen
the days when villages had police houses, with officers living in the community and pounding the beat there?
after by two PCSOs who had to cover a much wider patch. The village suffers from speeding, and sometimes at night becomes “a race track” for motor bikes and cars, he said. He said: “On the rare occasions we see the police, it’s a 'meet the public' stand-in telling us what a marvellous job they are doing.” Superintendent James
Sutherland, area commander for the police's Southern Division, which takes in East Cambridgeshire, has spoken at length to FenSCENE about the problems. He is the officer who holds the portfolio for curbing rural crime, and he set up the Cambridgeshire force's Rural Crime Action Team, which he says has been “one of our biggest successes in the last few years”. Last summer, the nine-strong squad, who use 4x4 cars, dismantled nearly 40 cannabis factories, seizing plants worth more than £1 million, and secured 30 prosecutions for offences including drugs, poaching, firearms possession and stolen vehicles, including farm machinery. Supt Sutherland said: “We set the RCAT up in April 2016 in direct response to tensions and community concerns around hare coursing, but their work has widened, and I'm pleased to say they've been very effective in building up residents' trust and confidence. “They're a purely proactive team, going out to look for trouble, and they've become very good at finding it. On some occasions they need to wear plain clothes, but mostly they are very visible.” Isn't that one of the big issues in villages – that police officers are rarely seen? Is it time to go back to
Above:
Superintendent James Sutherland has the responsibility for curbing rural crime
Above right: Cambridgeshire’s Rural Crime Action Team has dismantled nearly 40 cannabis factories.
Supt Sutherland said: “There's some ‘mythologising’ about policing in the 'golden age'. The reality is very different. Most villages never had a police house, and those that did exist were decades ago. It remains a powerful idea in people's heads however. “What I'd say about visibility is that high visibility patrols absolutely have a role to play in policing and preventing crime. There's no question about that, and they work. They make people feel safer, and they reduce crime.
SHEER VOLUME
“The difficulty is the sheer volume of streets and populations we've
Right: Crime statistics put
Cambridgeshire in the bottom third out of 39 police force areas.
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