Wycombe South

Anti social behaviour and shoplifting in the town centre and surrounding areas

Shoplifting, especially prolific repeat shoplifters, can have a deeply negative impact on the local community and increase overall criminality in an area. In Wycombe, we see this primarily in the town centre. Shoplifters can put shop staff in a position where they are fearing for their safety and have to justify loss of stock to their bosses, loss of stock building up over time can take a large toll on our local businesses. Police sergeant Lovell has obtained additional funding which has meant that the Town Centre is receiving significantly more patrols daily. There has been some very positive results from this in the last three month:
•Forty people being arrested for over 100 offences.
•Twenty five people remanded to court.
•A Criminal Behaviour Order obtained on a repeat shoplifting offender.
•A Civil injunction obtained on a repeat aggressive beggar.
•Thirty stop checks.
•Eight people put on drugs diversion courses.
•The Town Centre has a crime outcome rate of 24%, which is a large improvement.
Analytical data provided by the home office has resulted in 7620 minutes of dedicated foot patrols in the town centre and 940 minutes of targeted patrols in Castlefield in the afternoons and the evenings.

If you have any information please report on 101 or online at www. thamesvalley.police.uk.
Call 999 if a crime is in progress or you are at risk of harm.

Drug offences

The neighbourhood team are working to gather and build on intelligence surrounding drug possession, drug dealing and county drugs lines in order to put a stop to drugs operations and see offenders dealt with accordingly. High visibility patrols will continue to take place in areas identified to be the most impacted by drug offences, these will be locations such as: the train station, dovecot carpark, eastern street carpark and birdcage walk.

The Neighbourhood team also continue to work closely with the Proactive team who are heavily involved in tackling drug offences. Over the past few months multiple warrants have been carried out on properties identified to be associated with drug activity, with significant amounts of class A drugs being seized and offenders subsequently charged for being concerned in the supply of drugs.

If you have any information please report on 101 or online at www. thamesvalley.police.uk.
Call 999 if a crime is in progress or you are at risk of harm.

Speeding

To support the community speed watch groups, we will try to allocate them neighbourhood policing support on roads most identified to be a problem. For this purpose, we have recently obtained new speeding guns for our PCSO and we are currently planning for them to start carrying out speed assessments. So far, checks have been carried out on Lucas Road. We are also planning to train more PCs on this process so there will be an increased focus on targeting speeding in 2025.

The Department of Transport statistics showed that speed was the contributing factor in almost a third of road deaths in 2022. To tackle this problem effectively as a society, we need to challenge and build a stigma against those who speed, with the aim to make it as socially unacceptable as drink driving. This requires a community effort. If you are concerned about the speeds in your area, you can become a member of your local Speedwatch group or start your own. For more information please visit: https://www.communityspeedwatch.org It was good to get out with the Amersham Hill group last month and see how well and efficiently they worked as a team.

In Thames Valley there are 318 community speed watch groups with over 2500 volunteers. In the last 12 months they produced over 46,000 reports. The scheme has a 95.38% success rate of preventing people from reoffending. This ratio is based on drivers who have received the first letter from us and then not going through the community speed watch system within a 12 month period.

Our roads safety vans and fixed cameras provide enforcement and a visual deterrent across the area. The aim of the enforcement we carry out is to reduce the speed of traffic, making the roads safer for all road users and reduce the risk of injury, collisions and casualties. In Wycombe, 1454 fixed penalty tickets were issued in September, 1169 in October and 1310 in November.

If you have any information please report on 101 or online at www. thamesvalley.police.uk.
Call 999 if a crime is in progress or you are at risk of harm.