Police targeting knife crime ‘hotspots’ in Peterborough

Members of the Communities Scrutiny Committee sitting as a panel of the Safer Peterborough Partnership have heard that improvements are being made in tackling knife crime and sex offences.

Speaking at their meeting this week (November 2), Police Superintendent Kate Anderson, said: “We look at the figures that impact residents in Peterborough all the time, but we have specific meetings once every two weeks to highlight the areas where there are improvements and to look at areas where we feel improvements could be made.

“In addition to that and directly because of the recommendations of the Communities Scrutiny Committee and our other partners, we’ve implemented the very successful Op-Guardian in the south of the city to further tackle knife crime.

“Since it was introduced, Op-Guardian has, as you know, been looking at ways that knife crime within the city can be stopped including educating the people who carry knives realise that this is a very, very serious and potentially life-changing decision and will simply not be tolerated.
“Between 1 January 2020 and 31 March 2021, 1,769 non-domestic abuse-related crimes involving knives or sharp instruments were reported in Cambridgeshire – with almost half (40.7%) recorded in Peterborough.

“That equates to something in the region of 900 offences in just over 12 months which gives members an idea of the scale of the problem we are facing.

“Analysis has proved that individuals aged 16 to 20 are significantly more likely to become a victim of knife crime and it is those that we have been targeting to re-educate.

“Hotspots have been identified in Peterborough as the Central Ward, North Ward, Park Ward, Bretton, East Ward, Dogsthorpe and Ravensthorpe.

“However, since the introduction of our ‘4Ps’ plan – Prepare, Prevent, Protect and Pursue – the success rate in getting knives off the streets and away from those most vulnerable to knife-crime in our society has encouraged us to extend the programme to the south of the city as well.”

Superintendent Anderson went on to add that successes in the prevention of knife crime have also been reflected in other operations being conducted by the police including Op-Spotlight to prevent county-lines drugs from entering Cambridgeshire and a tactical project for the prevention of street sex-working and street exploitation.

She added: “While I can only give members basic details of the Op-Spotlight programme, for obvious reasons, I can say that we are encouraged by the early results and this will be an on-going operation carried out with our support partners to prevent drugs making their way into our towns and cities.

“We are introducing cuckooing toolkits across all our partnerships, continuing our education programme with landlords who let to vulnerable people in society, and identifying locations to roll out Naloxone training, again to protect the vulnerable.

“We had an intensification period in May 2021 which ran for two weeks alongside the countrywide National County Lines action plan and, again, without giving away too much information, plans are being drawn up for additional intensification periods throughout the coming months.

“We have been establishing new neighbourhood watch schemes to expand the community support in relation to sex offences which I know is a particular problem in the centre of Peterborough and which residents complain about on a regular basis.

“A tactical project has been set up to focus on protecting victims of sex crime, disrupting offenders and supporting communities who have to deal with sex offences outside their front doors.

“We are now holding monthly victim meetings to provide good opportunities for problem solving by talking about what issues are most successful in reducing the vulnerabilities that lead to people falling into sex crime in the first place, and this programme is currently overseeing the risk and resilience opportunities for 26 women with 16 of whom were deemed to be at the highest risk.

“A number of ‘out of court’ disposals have been issued to kerb crawlers and the Empowering Women Everywhere Housing Project has been developed to provide secure accommodation for sex workers at risk of exploitation.

“We are also currently undertaking a recruitment campaign for the management and safety of the residents which should be operational before Christmas.

“Numbers of new CCTV cameras are installed in areas most at risk to sex offences and we believe that this, coupled with the other activities I’ve mentioned will help reduce the problem.”