Nottingham and Manchester police forces 'causing concern'
Nottingham and Manchester police forces 'causing concern' according to HMIC report out today
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Thursday, 11, Mar 2010 05:48
By Sarah Garrod.
Police forces in Manchester and Nottingham are "causing concern", an assessment from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has found.
Violent assault was deemed highest in Nottinghamshire, and the HMIC said the county's police force was "below average" in many aspects of its policing.
Among the top police forces in England and Wales were Hertfordshire, Northumbria, Surrey and Cleveland, although the report's authors admitted to seeing large differences between police forces on certain issues.
For example HMIC found that more than half of the 43 forces surveyed do not have IT systems capable of automatically identifying repeat victims of antisocial behaviour (ASB) when they receive a call from a member of the public.
Consequently officers attending reports of ASB may not be aware of the previous history of an offender.
The report also identified that on average £158 is spent per household on the police, through council tax.
Chief inspector of constabulary Denis O'Connor said: "This assessment will help residents get more involved in how their area is policed. It will help them decide what their local policing priorities should be and whether the tax they pay for policing seems reasonable.
"The lack of reliable data on antisocial behaviour is a very real cause for concern. ASB makes many people's lives a misery, so HMIC is in the process of completing more work into assessing how forces deal with ASB."
Amongst the worst police forces in the report was Nottinghamshire constabulary.
However, the police force said yesterday that its crime was actually down, some 14.5 per cent since April 2009, with the force adding that it "looks set to record the lowest annual crime rate for many years" by April 2010.
Chief Constable Julia Hodson said she was delighted that by the overall picture, but added: "I fully accept that there is work to be done to speed up the fall in crime and to boost the number of crimes we detect."
One Nottingham Trent student told inthenews.co.uk: "There are a lot of gangs in Nottingham which is intimidating but I don't feel unsafe.
"A lot of students think it's quite scary here, you get a lot of people trying to get in your house! We've had a number of 'opportunists' trying to shake the door at night to see if it's unlocked.
"I've noticed an increase in the numbers of community officers on the streets in the day, but there is a lack of police officers on the streets at night.
"I worry more about my female friends in Nottingham than at home in Manchester, I never really worry too much in Manchester."
While the HMIC admitted that today's report was an "uncomfortable read for some" it added there was "much to celebrate", such as figures showing national homicide rates are at a ten year low. As well as releasing the figures, the HMIC also launched the My Police website today, to provide users with local information about their police force.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) lead on performance management Chief Constable Steve Finnigan said: "Today, HMIC has taken a significant step forward in its new role as fierce advocate of the public interest by launching the MyPolice website. The site aims to present judgments of police performance and indicators of risk to the public, whilst taking account of the demands and challenges of each police force area.
"There can be no doubt that the task of the police service today is more complicated and varied than ever before. To offer an accurate representation of contemporary policing is therefore irrefutably in the interest of both the public and the service."