Police action leading to drop in ASB across Newark

More neighbourhood officer patrols and an extra town centre base have contributed to a marked drop in antisocial behaviour in Newark.

Putting measures in place to tackle antisocial behaviour (ASB) has been a longstanding priority for the area’s neighbourhood policing team.

Providing more of a police presence in the community has been central to the team’s plans to try and prevent offending and respond to reports quicker.

A designated ASB rapid response car was rolled out ahead of last summer to allow for more patrols across a wider area and to help officers attend calls within minutes.

Meanwhile, an additional base in Newark’s market square has enabled neighbourhood officers to get out on foot more in the town centre to help detect and deter different offences.  

This approach has resulted in improvements, with ASB reports in Newark and Sherwood dropping by seven per cent between January and December 2023, compared to the year before.

There has also been a 13 per cent reduction in ASB, when comparing the financial year to date with the period between April and December 2022. 

Despite seeing the new measures start to bear fruit, Inspector Charlotte Ellam admitted that more still needed to be done to crackdown on ASB in the area.  

The District Commander for Newark and Sherwood said: “Tackling ASB has been a longstanding priority for our neighbourhood policing team, because the public have told us that this is an area of criminality they want us to focus on.

“We do a huge amount of work to try and combat this issue, with our officers conducting daily patrols of Newark town centre and other hotspot areas to provide a crime deterrent and to spot offending as it happens.

“As part of this, we’ve assigned designated officers to focus on ASB, who go out each day in the ‘Op Renegade’ car to provide a visible presence on the streets and engage with the public.   

“Thanks to our partners at Newark Town Council, our officers can also now base themselves in the market square, which means they can get out in and around the town centre more for a mixture of visible and plain clothed foot patrols.

“We also carry out regular days of action, where we utilise tactics like placing officers in plain clothes out in the community to spot and respond to incidents of ASB and other forms of criminality as they happen.

“It is pleasing to see that this work has started to show some positive results, but we’re very aware that more still needs to be done to continue cracking down on ASB.”

Nottinghamshire Police is focusing on the work carried out by police in the community this week as part of neighbourhood policing week of action, which runs from 22 January to 28 January.

Shoplifting is another area that has seen improvements in Newark recently, with conviction rates skyrocketing since the neighbourhood policing team introduced a dedicated shop theft officer last April.  

In the months that have followed, 17 per cent of reported shop thefts have led to action being taken – whether through an arrest or charge – more than three times greater than the national average.

Elsewhere, officers have also worked on multiple ‘Safer Streets’ improvement projects over the last year – along with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) – to reduce violent offending and make Newark and Sherwood safer.

Insp Ellam added: “Everything we do as a policing team is centred on keeping people safe and ensuring anyone who jeopardises that is identified and brought before the courts.

“We do a huge amount of work to tackle different types of crime – including violence against women and girls and ASB, which have both been policing priorities for us over the last 12 months.

“Crime prevention is a key part of this work and there have been multiple examples of us working with local partners to try and drive down crime.

“One is the Safer Streets project, which has resulted in improvements being made to help tackle violence and improve our communities as places to live, work and visit.

“We’re always looking for new ways to tackle crime in our area, and will continue to work closely with our partners, like Newark and Sherwood District Council and the OPCC, to see how we can explore these different ideas.”

Inspector Charlotte Ellam, District Commander for Newark and Sherwood