Neighbourhood inspector marks a year at Radford Road with update on three key priorities

Inspector Liz Gaskin

A neighbourhood inspector says progress is being made on a string of policing priorities as she marks a year at Radford Road Police Station.

Inspector Liz Gaskin took charge of the City Central neighbourhood policing team in the summer of 2023 – bringing with her over 20 years of valuable policing experience.

She leads a dedicated team comprising three beat sergeants, 22 police constables and 16 PCSOs – all dedicated to making the district safer through an approach that is focused on visibility, engagement and problem solving.

City Central is a multicultural area encompassing Berridge, Radford and Park, Hyson Green, The Arboretum, Wollaton East and Lenton Abbey. There is also a significant student population due to the proximity of Nottingham’s two universities.

After reviewing crime trends and listening to the concerns of local residents, businesses and students, Inspector Gaskin laid out three priorities for her team to tackle: serious violence, antisocial behaviour and acquisitive crime (burglary and robbery).

Whilst the problems facing the district are longstanding and complex, Inspector Gaskin said progress is being made across all three priorities.

She said: “The past year, since I joined, has gone really fast,” she said. “I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone. I feel like I’ve got to know my team now and the area a lot better. I’ve got a clearer understanding of what the problems are and what the priorities need to be.

“I came into neighbourhood policing because I love the idea of problem-solving. I’m really proud to be the neighbourhood inspector for this area and have been getting stuck into lots of issues and projects.

“With the help of my team, partners and various other stakeholders, we are making progress in addressing concerns and issues raised by local residents and businesses.”

Here is what Inspector Gaskin said in relation to the three priority areas:

Serious violence

“We’re in one of those areas where unfortunately we do get reports of on-street violence now and again.

 “For us as a team, it’s about deploying the right officers to the right places at the right times. For example, the Forest Recreation Ground has quite a high rate of antisocial behaviour and violent crime, mostly in the evenings. Therefore, we’ve identified that as a hotspot area and have put on additional patrols there.

 “We’ve got new call points there as well. If you’re in trouble, you can now press a buzzer at the call point and it goes straight to the CCTV office. It’s 24-7 and somebody in the office can talk to you and activate the cameras so they can see you and help keep you safe.

 “We are continuously looking at ways to make the park safer place to be, especially at night. The knife crime team have been very productive in our area recently, proactively carrying out patrols and making some good arrests – not just for carrying weapons but also for possessing drugs.

 “We also had a knife amnesty bin here (at Radford Road Police Station) as part of the national Operation Sceptre campaign, which enabled people to dispose of knives or offensive weapons safely without fear of being prosecuted.”

 Antisocial behaviour

“This is another tough nut to crack. We’ve secured some Home Office funding for extra patrols in hot spot areas for ASB, including outside Asda in Hyson Green. That funding [from the Hotspot Response Fund] helps us put more visibility in those areas. The funding is for this financial year so we’ve just started to put in those extra patrols.

“Both Hyson Green and Forest Rec have been given those extra patrols, which is essentially officers working overtime to keep people safe.

“Asda is an area where we get a lot of ASB reports, so we’re in the process of planning a day of action. It is somewhere where our street drinkers choose to go but we are doing what we can to move people on, particularly if they are causing a nuisance.

“To do this, we work closely with Asda and homelessness charity Framework. We’ve also successfully applied to the courts for a number of Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs), which give us the power to arrest people who fail to stay away from a designated area where they’ve been causing distress to members of the public.

“We’re utilising CBOs as they give us the opportunity to support offenders while preventing further offences being committed.”

Acquisitive crime (burglary and robbery)

“This priority was initially focused on burglary, as we had a spike in burglaries – particularly at student accommodation. Students were going back to their family homes and then returning to Nottingham to find they’d been burgled.

“We put a load of patrols in, made some arrests and things thankfully have calmed down a little.

“Again, we’ve made some key arrests which has had a significantly positive impact.

“That said, we’re not complacent and will continue to work with residents, the student population and universities to tackle these issues.

“For example, as well as sharing crime prevention advice, we’ve been holding free bike-marking events at schools, colleges and universities. This has enabled students to have their bikes registered on a national database, so that it’s easier for us to reunite them with their bike if it is stolen and later recovered.”

Inspector Gaskin joined Nottinghamshire Police in 2001 and was based in the county for more than two decades, mostly as a sergeant.

Prior to joining the City Central team, she led the Reacher team for the Beeston area, developing intelligence and disrupting criminality with a particular focus on the supply of drugs. She also worked as a Demand Management Inspector, overseeing the deployment of officers to emergency incidents.

Inspector Gaskin said she was enjoying her new role – but admitted neighbourhood policing in Nottingham was very different to her previous roles outside of the city.

She said: “It’s a totally different patch to where I’d been previously. I worked on the county for 23 years – to come to the city after all that time was a bit of an eye-opener. It’s a totally different community here.

“It’s a very diverse area and I quite like that because it means you experience a variety of different cultures.

“I applied for this role in neighbourhood policing and I’ve no regrets at all. After 23 years’ service, neighbourhoods was where I saw myself rather than response. It is an entirely different role and I’ve loved the transition.”

Inspector Liz Gaskin (left) at a Mini Police event at a local school

Inspector Gaskin said the key aim of neighbourhood policing is to reconnect the police with communities. To achieve this, every ward within the City Central district has dedicated officers whose role is to consult with the community to identify the crime and disorder issues that are of most concern to residents, to take action to solve those problems, and then to feed back the results to the community.

“With neighbourhood policing, you take a lot more ownership of the issues around you,” she said. “Response officers will respond to 999 calls and deal with emergencies, whereas neighbourhood policing is about tackling ongoing problems, so to speak.

“It’s about getting to understand communities and building trust, so that issues can be identified and solutions found.

“We carry out a lot of engagement events to help build that trust. We’ve got such a diverse community so we really try to tap into the opportunities that presents us from an engagement perspective. There’s always something going on somewhere.

“In addition to that, targeting prolific offenders or somebody who is wanted is a key part of our role as neighbourhood officers. The team relish the challenge of going out into the community and finding people suspected of committing a crime and we’ll continue to do that.”

More information about the City Central neighbourhood policing team can be found here: Radford and Park | Your Area | Nottinghamshire Police | Nottinghamshire Police