With winter looming, the prospect of seasonal crime rears its ugly head and Nuneaton and Bedworth's area commander has outlined how he plans to tackle it. Chief Inspector Steve Davies said that they have six priorities over the coming months, and some of them will come as no surprise to residents.
Bike-related crime remains one of the big priorities for the local police teams. CI Davies said that focused work is going on to tackle the issue, which he has openly said is glamourised by social media sites such as TikTok.
This is linked to another priority - tackling youth violence. While the dedicated 'Operation Outfitter' is being wrapped up and although he said that they expect to see a 'slight drop off', the local police commander said that ensuring that the borough's historic problems do not crop up again is key.
"Although we historically don't see as much youth violence certainly in the winter, work will continue to make sure we have a firm grip on it during the winter months," he said. "Because if we don't grip it throughout the winter months, we see in the summer next year a rise in violent crime again because we haven't managed it properly.
"It certainly won't be 'let's all take our foot off the gas and wait." There will also be a focus on Halloween and Bonfire Night as well, with dedicated operations during these periods, as well as Christmas, to try to ensure that they are not spoilt by trouble-makers.
This ties in with work to reduce anti-social behaviour. "We know that this will increase, and we want to to keep law and order around our housing estates because we know in this period that people have unauthorised firework displays and bonfires," he explained.
The local Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs) will also be carrying out specialist operations around business crime. "We have a business crime week planned in October and also over the Christmas period where we know we will see an increase in shoplifters," the top cop said.
Another area that police will focus on, which is part of ongoing work, is around domestic violence. The borough sadly has, for many years, had the highest rates of domestic violence incidents in the whole of Warwickshire.
"Domestic violence will be a property, it is always a priority but we do tend to see it rise in the winter months as people are in the homes more, they don't tend to go out as much," he said. "And as we go towards Christmas we know alcohol and drugs play a key part in violence, but we do see that happen more and more in homes rather than on the streets."
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