Police hit back at report's anti-social behaviour claims

SOUTH Yorkshire Police have come out fighting in the face of a report which said officers were worried about problems battling anti-social behaviour following changes in the policing structure.

The Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary report on vulnerable victims noted how the county-wide force had recently introduced new Local Policing Teams.

It said officers had told inspectors this could hamper their ability to help repeat victims of anti-social behaviour.

The report noted: “HMIC found that staff across South Yorkshire Police are proud of their long-term problem-solving activity in support of repeat victims of anti-social behaviour.

“However, many expressed concern that changes to the force operating model and their shift arrangements have the potential to undermine this area of their work as individual officers and teams could could lose continuity and ownership of their work to support repeat vulnerable victims.”

But Chief Supt Rob Odell said this week that anti-social reports had not climbed and public satisfaction rates had not dropped since the changes last summer.

“At the time of this HMIC inspection, our first Local Policing Team had just gone live and HMIC feedback was valuable when we went on to rollout Local Policing Teams (LPTs) to our three remaining areas later in the year,” he said.

“Our LPTs have responsibility for the urgent demand in a local area, as well as long-term problem solving and keeps our resources in the areas where they are based.

“Now that the LPTs are all in place we can look back at the crime and antisocial behaviour levels across the year.

“Anti-social behaviour tends to go up and down across the year and since the force completed its move to the new Local Policing Model, there has not been any noticeable increase in reports of anti-social behaviour.

“This is reinforced by satisfaction data gathered from members of the public, which does not show any significant change that would suggest the public are less satisfied.

“Anti-social behaviour is a nuisance to our communities and we continue to work hard to address any issues, as well as continuing to provide support to vulnerable residents who can find this kind of crime incredibly distressing.”