Agenda item

Report of the Police and Crime Commissioner

The PCC gave the panel an update on the Police and Crime Plan fighting crime.

In recent news there has been an explosion of two dwellings within the Benwell area of Newcastle. The PCC wanted to pass her thanks to the emergency services and condolences to the community.

The PCC has recently been to the Pride and Policing awards which has recognised the teams and individuals for their work.

Police officers involved in supporting the de-escalation of disturbances in Sunderland have been recognised for their hard work.

It was rewarding to see the Government recommend the rolling out of a number of projects at the Labour Party Conference that are already in place in Northumbria and being funded through the OPCC. The domestic abuse experts in the control room initiative has been in place across the force for six years already. It is pleasing to see this being rolled our nationally.

The A&E Navigators programme has been successfully rolled out in two of our hospitals within the region – this is where staff are on hand in A&E departments to engage and support people who have attended as a result of a violent injury and provide further support in terms of positive diversionary links. This will soon be rolled out to a further third hospital locally and has been introduced by the Government as a new national initiative. The PCC office has requested a visit from home office to show the work that has been done.

Hate crime awareness week (14^th – 18^th October), launched a £100k community fund for projects to support cohesion to reduce the tensions that led to the disruptions.

Further funding has been for the ‘youth fund’, the monies has now been allocated. The purpose of the funding was for young people to give ideas on how to reduce crime in their areas. Applications were judged by a panel of young people and then signed off by professionals. One program arose from the riots in the Sunderland for a day to celebrate all the different cultures and faiths that go on in West End and across Newcastle, this application was very highly supported.

Opportunities for communities to apply for funding for safe spaces is available.

This month, a report has been released of the police inspectorate for anti-social behaviour. Northumbria police have been cited for good practise to enhance partnership working across the force. Project shield was launched in the summer, this was for the collaboration of police, local authorities and transport.

Serious violence figures have fallen by 23% and anti-social behaviour has fallen by 10%. Take as caution with these figures as this is over a one-year period and we would expect this to go down year on year.

Sunderland city centre, ASB and SV has fallen by 24% which is significant as it included the riots.

The PCC went out with Project Shield officers from Northumbria Police and Sunderland Council and found the experience amazing as you can see the strength of community wardens from the local authority using their knowledge to work with the police, which led to 1 of 3 arrests in that evening.

Upcoming events and information;

• Awaiting budget end of October,
• Grant settlement on 2^nd December for victims only
• Anti-social behaviour around off-road bikes as a national level

A new law around has recently been introduce banning a number of offensive weapons. Important to recognise that knife crime is horrendous and can have devasting effects on the wider community, however, this is a small proportion of the serious violence crimes that take place within the region. Other serious crimes are; alcohol, drugs, night life, pubs and domestic violence.

The panel discussed the following;

The police houses in Hexham have been vacant for a long period of time and have now started to decay, the panel were informed the houses are being advertised for sale on Knight Frank. The monies received from the sale will be reallocated to the capital program.

It was requested by the Newcastle councillors the PCC visit EPIC and CitySafe which is a similar program to the Sunderland anti-social behaviour programs. The programs are looking to expand around the city and beyond and it would be good to showcase their work. The PCC agreed to set up a meeting to visit the team.

A concern amongst the panel is how anti-social behaviour has increased across the North East and nationally, and if there is a system that could be implemented to track data that goes back further than 1 – 2 years and to ensure the consistency of methodology. The PCC advised the panel that police are creating a dashboard that will show the most up to date data that will be able to identify hotspots areas. Northumberland advised they have been collecting the data and can assist/support other Local Authorities.

The panel were interested in how ORLO works, the panel members were advised that ORLO is used to help to gather evidence. All cases that are reported via social media will be logged into ORLO, however, you would need to ‘@northumbriapolice’ in order for the system to find it. The system is monitored by employees and not an AI system. If the public are not comfortable reporting to 101 or 999 they are able to tag or direct message us and it will be received. It was advised the best way to submit evidence would be to direct message to any of the Northumbria Police the social media page.

RESOLVED

i.              That the report is noted.