Tackling crime from day to day

By Danny Shaw
BBC Home Affairs Correspondent

The details of the day to day work of the police is often overlooked

In a conference room on the second floor of Worcester police station, 19 senior officers and staff have gathered for the daily 9am meeting.

A conference call facility enables the officers to hear from police across south Worcestershire - to update them on incidents in the past 24 hours, and plan for the day ahead.

The focus is on finding an elderly lady who's missing, investigating a series of burglaries and locating a man suspected of an attempted rape.

Detective Sergeant Jim Fox from Reactive CID, arguably Worcester's busiest police department, says he has 13 detectives, each working on 10 investigations.

"We can go through a period of a few weeks where we get a bit of breathing space to just get on with our enquiries. Other weeks, three of four jobs will come in on one day and we'll struggle to manage the demand," he says.

Much of what Det Sgt Fox's team does doesn't make headlines: attending post-mortems and inquests, investigating crimes at local prisons, preparing case files for prosecutions.

On our visit, two officers are making a 260-mile round trip to Cambridge to pick up items of evidence.

Most police work is not as glamorous as on screen policing

Every key decision the detective sergeant makes is documented; every unsolved serious crime reviewed.

"It's not a particularly comfortable process [to be reviewed]. Your decisions are being scrutinised by other people. But if it does help us detect something then we're all for it," says Det Sgt Fox.

West Mercia's detection rate is down year-on-year but still slightly above average: 29% of offences result in someone being charged, cautioned or given a penalty fine.

But Detective Chief Inspector Jerry Reakes-Williams says clear-up rates often hinge on factors beyond the police's control. Although his team have suspects for the majority of the 40 rape cases they're investigating - prosecutions will not necessarily follow.

"In 38 of those cases we've actually arrested somebody and we've got somebody on police bail...but obviously what we have difficulty then in showing is getting the evidence to get a prosecution," he says.

"I would say in the majority of cases alcohol is a big issue."

At the desk

At the back of the police station, a police van pulls up, the doors swing open and amid shouting and arguing a suspect is brought into the custody suite.

He is a prolific offender, who has alleged to have breached a CRASBO - a criminal anti-social behaviour order.

Detective Inspector Mark Loader works at the nerve centre of modern policing

The man has a history of domestic violence and is well known to West Mercia's public protection unit.

Protecting the public from known offenders is one of the fastest-growing areas of policing.

It involves a lot of behind-the-scenes liaison work with social services, probation and prison staff - and that too can bring frustration.

"Gone are the days it's just about sexy policing, kicking the doors in," says Detective Inspector Adrian Todd.

"A lot of the things we do wouldn't make good television- it's about crossing the Ts and dotting the Is."

Police work now is as much about following procedures and justifying decisions as it is about detecting crime.

That's why, at the nerve-centre of South Worcestershire's police operation, the intelligence unit, they have developed a computer programme to help officers decide where resources should be placed and which crimes should be prioritised.

"We have finite resources, we'd like to deal with everything but unfortunately we can't," says Detective Inspector Mark Loader, who works in the unit.

In the neighbourhood

About 60% of West Mercia's £193m budget goes on local policing. Like the rest of England and Wales, every neighbourhood in the area has its own dedicated team of officers and community support staff.

Much of what they do is unglamorous, unexciting police work: attending community meetings, visiting schools, following up complaints about graffiti, vandalism and underage drinking.

One of the most experienced neighbourhood officers, Pc Richard Waterhouse, even helped set up a youth club on his patch, Crabbs Cross, in the home secretary's constituency, Redditch.

The idea is to give youngsters something to do in the evenings, and keep them off the streets.

"You wouldn't associate a police officer necessarily with doing something like that, but the benefits of that are fantastic," says Pc Waterhouse.

PC Richard Waterhouse set up a youth club as a way of keeping young people out of trouble

One of the regulars at the youth club, the Ditch, is 12-year-old Brandon. Over the summer, he was arrested for criminal damage, for smashing windows.

Since then Pc Waterhouse has helped keep him out of trouble, persuading him to sign an acceptable behaviour contract. Maxine Newman, Brandon's mother, says the officer's involvement has made a big difference.

"I got to know Richard through the community centre. I think he's doing a brilliant job," she says.

The Home Office has ring-fenced funding for three years for neighbourhood policing: it is at the heart of the recently-published Green Paper on police reform.

But Assistant Chief Constable Simon Chesterman says there's a danger in thinking that it's the "only game in town" when there are other, less visible, issues.

"There are issues that go on in the background whether it's terrorism, sex offenders or serious and organised crime we can't do that with fluorescent jackets alone," he says.

On the road

The Green Paper also calls for police forces to collaborate more, in the absence of police force mergers - which were kicked into touch two years ago after a backlash from some chief constables and police authorities.

At West Mercia, the best example of collaboration is the Central Motorway Police Group, which it runs jointly with the West Midlands and Staffordshire forces.

Together they patrol the seven motorways that criss-cross their force areas, from Birmingham to Telford; from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Worcester.

Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport, from West Midlands, who's the lead officer for CMPG, says the group targets criminals who use the motorway network.

"Criminals move up and down the network, they don't stop at the borders," she says.

The question is how much further this kind of partnership working can go.

PC Danny Evans and PC Ian Boyles patrol the motorways of West Mercia

West Mercia's Assistant Chief Constable, Simon Chesterman, says closer collaboration must not be a return to the days of regional crime squads - when dedicated groups of officers tackled cross-border drugs and organised crime.

"One of the things we've tried to resist in dealing with collaboration is the creation of standing armies at regional level that literally would wait until a significant incident occurred for them to go and resolve," he says.

Over the coming years, as police budgets, at West Mercia and elsewhere, get tighter, questions about collaboration, local policing and burdensome procedures will be at the heart of the debate about what our police service is for in the 21st Century.