The media machine, look what we did

[Standard Dave]

1,600 ARRESTS IN FIRST YEAR

A Police team set up a year ago to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in Nottingham has arrested more than 1,600 offenders in its first year.

Detection rates are up and crime is down in the city centre since the Safer Streets team was launched.

The team of 15 uniformed police constables, two sergeants, two plain-clothes officers and four beat managers has arrested 1,651 offenders and detected 817 crimes.

Their detection rate of 37% is six per cent higher than the year before the launch of the team. Crime has also fallen in the city centre in the past year by seven per cent, from 12,208 in 2004-5 to 11,413 offences.

Inspector Paul Winter, city centre commander, believes the Safer Streets team has played a key role in the downward crime trend.

He said: "This team has made a huge impact in policing the city centre, particularly in tackling crime, such as violence, linked with the night-time economy.

"They are very pro-active officers who have also been able to target persistent and prolific offenders such as street level drug dealers, shoplifters and thieves.

"The Safer Streets team formed after a rigorous selection process and is paid for out of existing force budgets. It has also benefited from intelligence provided by other specialist police teams."

Among the team's successes was the three-and-a-half-year jail sentence given to prolific drug dealer Tremaine Markland.

Markland, of Pendle Crescent, St Ann's, was convicted after police caught him with cocaine and heroin twice in less than a week.

He was observed by undercover officers from the team as he attempted to sell drugs to a known heroin addict and was caught after a chase. Officers found him with more drugs days later after seeing him acting suspiciously in the Victoria Centre.

Another success was the conviction of prolific thief Marie Morgan.

Morgan, 43, of no fixed abode, preyed on vulnerable old women, stealing their handbags as they shopped in the city centre. She had recently finished a 230-day jail sentence for theft, when she was caught trying to steal a pensioner's handbag in the Hyson Green branch of Asda on July 11. She received a further 60 days in prison for that offence.

Prolific shoplifter Segio Carrerra, 28, a Portuguese immigrant, was arrested trying to steal from a city centre shop within an hour of appearing at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on a string of shoplifting charges.

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/di...pNodeId=133951


I like the bit about the rigorous selection process my interview was very rigorous all five minutes of the boss trying to get me to join because I had just finished another pro active attachment.

[gozling]

so i guess its safer to fly across the pond now

[Piggybank Cop]

[nitestokker]

That's cool. I don't mean to sound like I'm trying to start something, but out of those 1,600 arrests how many got convicted? After all, that's really what counts. I could arrest 1,600 people in about a month by myself but most of those arrests would probably get thrown out. Once again, I am very proud of you and your homies, but I am just the type that likes to dig deeper to get to the meat of the subject. Good job!

[Standard Dave]

817 detected crimes although that doesn't mean 817 people went to court some are charged with more than one detectable offence.

However some crimes are not counted as detections, Drunk and disorderly is not a detection but is arrestable and arrests on fail to appear warrants are not detectable so it's hard to say how many of those went to court, also fixed penalty notices and cautions for some crimes count as detections so those people don't go to court but do count as a detection. The system is complex and means nothing to anyone except the statisticians.

The major achievements of arresting drug dealers and users and keeping bars and pubs in order are only touched on.

There are some stats about violent crime which I don't have to hand which were not included because they made the situation look worse than before however if you look closer the arrests for violence are up but they are for pro active public order offences like threatening behaviour, carrying weapons and affray the number of reactive arrests for assaults has stayed about the same but the number of assaults went down.