Issue - meetings
Serious, Violent and Organised Crime in Maidstone
Meeting: 24/09/2019 - Communities, Housing and Environment Committee (Item 11)
11 Serious, Violent and Organised Crime in Maidstone PDF 107 KB
Councillor Call for Action from Councillor Purle
Additional documents:
- Appendix 1: Police Crime Data, item 11 PDF 65 KB View as HTML (11/2) 400 KB
- Appendix 2 Offence Classification Index, item 11 PDF 121 KB
- Appendix 3: Serious and Organised Crime Strategy Framework Definitions, item 11 PDF 24 KB View as HTML (11/4) 4 KB
- Appendix 4 KCC’s Early Help and Preventative Services- Youth Justice data, item 11 PDF 2 MB View as HTML (11/5) 85 KB
- Appendix 5: PCC Safer Communities Grant 2019/20- Commissioned Projects, item 11 PDF 68 KB View as HTML (11/6) 18 KB
- Appendix 6: Domestic Abuse Project Briefing Note, item 11 PDF 55 KB View as HTML (11/7) 8 KB
- 2019-08-27_CandD_Redacted, item 11 PDF 1 MB
Minutes:
The Chairman informed the Committee that the agenda item would start with a presentation from the Police and the Community Protection Manager which would include a couple of videos to provide context to the subject matter. He requested that the Committee took a strategic look in terms of the content of the presentation, but also take into account the local perspective.
The witnesses contributing to the meeting were asked to introduce themselves to the Committee:-
Kent Police - Chief Inspector Ray Quiller and Inspector Mark Hedges
Ilsa Butler Manager from One Maidstone
which heads the Business Improvement District for the town
centre
Dan Bride, Assistant Director for North and West Kent Adolescent
Services and Head of Youth Justice Services in Kent
The
Community Protection Manager, in introducing the report, stated
that the presentation would provide some context and real life
experiences surrounding the issues highlighted in the report which
included an introduction to the new Kent Police Violence Reduction
Unit funded by the Home Office. It would also give an update on the
state of serious, violent and organised crime within the Maidstone
area.
Members were also informed that the role of the Serious Organised
Crime Panel (SOCP) would be explained, together with context around
the 4 P approach which was adopted by the SOCP and what is meant by
disruption activities. The presentation
would culminate in providing evidence on how knife crime was being
tackled, including reporting and intelligence sharing to provide a
solution to this problem and would look at how the Police are
working with partners to tackle domestic abuse.
Chief Inspector Quiller gave a brief history of his 20 years career in the Police and advised that Kent Police had recently been graded as outstanding and that illustrated how hard the Force worked to maintain and constantly improve the service they provided to the public and had a long and proud tradition of bringing offenders to justice.
He
thanked Councillors and Officers for their support in keeping the
district safe and outlined various initiatives that had been
introduced, particularly in regard to intelligence gathering and
CCTV deployment.
Crime in Maidstone
Inspector Hedges presented the crime data comprising of 2018/19 and 2019/20 (financial years).
The Committee noted that the Police had been recording their data differently since 2018 and therefore it would not be possible to provide comparisons with previous years as they would not be like for like. Therefore the current data can only be prepared to last year.
Highlights included that overall Crime in Maidstone was down by
6.1% which equated to 400 less victims.
Serious Violent Crime was down to 8.3%, with violent crime down by
8.1% and Public Order offences were down by 36.5% and Robbery
incidences down by 31.4%
However, the number of possessions of a weapon were up by 13.5%,
Drug Offences were up by 83.7%
Maidstone’s Community Safety Plan 2019-2022
The Committee were reminded of the priorities set within the Community Safety Plan 2019-2022 which were:-
· Protecting our communities against ... view the full minutes text for item 11