Northamptonshire police bosses discuss anti-social behaviour and road policing
Northamptonshire's Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner Danielle Stone and Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet answered questions from the public.
Issues of anti-social behaviour, retail crime and road policing were discussed at a 'Chat with the Chiefs' online event.
Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Danielle Stone and Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet answered questions on crime, community safety and policing submitted by members of the public at an online public meeting.
The event between 6.30pm and 8pm yesterday evening (Tuesday 21 October) was live streamed on both the Commissioner’s and Northamptonshire Police’s Facebook pages and on the force's YouTube account.
Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet said they've made big progress on anti-social behaviour though more is still to be done:
"We have almost trebled with the amount of Neighbourhood Policing Officers we had only two and a half years ago.
"You will now see, if you have access to our website, you will be able to put your postcode in and actually be able to look at who's in your local neighbourhood policing teams."
He also said the force got rid of the monetary value limits to investigate shoplifting offences,
"I thought that was fundamentally wrong. We shouldn't be picking and choosing what we investigate. We knew we'd lost some of the confidence of our retailers."
Working with retail and partners like Northampton BID, the force now have one of the highest outcome and detection rates for retail crime in the country.
Danielle Stone said they are working to uncover the true causes of retail crime and anti-social behaviour, through outreach work, but say they can't just "pick people up and bang them in prison for antisocial behaviour."
The pair had said no topic was off limits, and that they’d welcome questions on any topic around policing or community safety from neighbourhood policing, road safety to violence against women and girls.
Questions had been anonymously put forward ahead of last nights event, with live questions also answered.
Youth issues came up often with both Chiefs pointing to the work of a programmed called Pol-Ed from the West Yorkshire force. 9000 young people have been reached with this programme in our county to engage with young people.
Safety on our roads was also something many people were concerned about.
Both Chiefs confirmed they are aiming for zero deaths on our roads, stating there have been 18 deaths on our roads already this year.
Chief Constable Ivan Balhatchet confirmed they are looking into bringing new static cameras to the county after a resident pointed out the counties are out of date:
"Working with the local authority and working with other partners and with the strategic board I mentioned at the beginning, we want to invest in understanding where our red routes are we've got all that data. What technology can we use with static cameras? Use of artificial intelligence? So it just doesn't do speeding, it just drive a behaviour as well."
More parish councils are also reportedly getting requests of 20mph speed limits in Northamptonshire villages, according to the event.
They pair also covered issues of the amount of officers dismissed in recent years from the force, and the issue of hate crimes, rural crime, violence against women and girls, and cyber crime.
Both Chiefs say the event will happen again in future.
You can watch the stream back here.