Opinion: Drug abuse has an effect on every residential area of the city

One of the first priorities in my in-tray was improving engagement with all communities across the area, and hopefully you will have seen our neighbourhood teams throughout the city actively working with their respective areas to agree locally set priorities for us to focus on.

One such priority that will not come as a surprise to many is that each area, apart from the City Centre, has a priority to address drug use and dealing. This means in every mainly residential part of our city, people report issues stemming from drug abuse. This is not unique to Peterborough and is an issue that is felt across all other large towns and cities in the UK, but none the less is a recurring issue and a priority for the constabulary.

We were reminded of the brutal reality of drugs in April last year with the murder of Mihai Dobre by Lewis Hutchinson. Here we saw a man shot dead for what we believe was intended to be no more than a few wraps of drugs and some cash.

While it is easy to comment on social media how ineffective the police are, we rely on information and intelligence from all of you. This could take many forms, but I am specifically talking about telling us (or reporting to Crimestoppers anonymously) who is dealing drugs, who is using drugs, who is breaking into houses and cars to steal things to sell for drugs and who is running drugs lines into, and out of, Peterborough. It is easy to say it’s our job to know this, but the reality is we are not walking down every street in every part of the city all the time. Like most other public bodies, we are working to many demands, and the reality is our – your – officers’ time is taken up dealing with 101 things totally unconnected to this, issues such as domestic abuse, missing people, dealing with vulnerable young people and those in crisis, responding to collisions, policing football matches and protests.

This is not me making excuses, I am comfortable with my role and know I must cover a lot of bases with a finite amount of police officers and staff. This is me making a plea for you to work with us and tell us what you know. Then it is down to us to do the rest, be that executing early morning search warrants, making arrests, putting in place covert options to gather evidence or submitting evidence to the courts to prosecute offenders.

I also encourage you to follow our social media channels, we have pushed this heavily over the last year to ensure we are upfront about what we are doing here. You will see updates on core policing issues, neighbourhood priorities and community meetings, operational updates like road closures and also get to read about charges and court proceedings as they happen.