Taking away the public's fear of crime

IT is a conundrum -- crime has fallen over a number of years yet the fear of crime is rising.

But it is a puzzle Paul Stephenson is determined to solve.

He said: "Fear of crime damages people's lives almost as much as real crime because it stops them going out at night and doing the things they want to do.

"It is no good me saying it is unfair. That's reality. I have got to do something about that and that is my big challenge."

In January he failed in a bid to increase the police precept of the council tax by 28 per cent to pay for 500 extra officers over two years.

But the Police Authority agreed to put it up by 15 per cent, allowing 100 extra officers to be recruited over the next year.

Mr Stephenson intends to use the vast majority of those additional resources in response units to attend to incidents of anti-social behaviour.

He believes tackling this is key to reducing the fear of crime.

Mr Stephenson also believes the recent addition to our streets of community beat managers and the promise of more in the future will help tackle the fear of crime.

And he has pledged to continue cracking down on illegal drugs, which are behind 70 per cent of Lancashire's crime.

Mr Stephenson said: "I am absolutely certain that we are going to maintain the pressure on drugs. We have the Tower Project which is a rehabilitative project that has been rolled out across the county.

"We select prolific, volume offenders who have a drug addiction, whether we have caught them for crime or not, we know who they are.

"We say to them your only choice is to co-operate and we will do everything to bring you services to reduce your re-offending.

"If you don't agree, we will target you -- you can't do it without a threat.

"It is not soft policing. Once you get past that peak young man age range, many don't want to live their lives like that.

"If you come out of prison and the only easy things to get are drugs and the hard things are a house and employment, you will get drugs."

Mr Stephenson also acknowledges that to reduce the fear of crime the public must trust the police.

In a ground-breaking move, he announced last month that the trigger for fines at speed camera sites was increasing from 35 mph by several mph.

Motorists passing through at those speeds would therefore receive letter of warning for the first offence instead of a £60 penalty.

Mr Stephenson said: "It was the right thing to do.

"There is a perception that people like burglars get an easier ride than speeders.

"It has to be seen as fair by the public or they will remove their support. We cannot police without consent."

How we can become best police in country

AS WELL as tackling the rising fear of crime, Mr Stephenson wants to make Lancashire the best force in the country.

And he has identified five key areas to achieve this - leadership, engaging the community, delivering results, resource management and communication.

He said: "On delivering results there is a big debate nationally -- should we deliver central government targets or what our communities want. Well, wake up, smell the coffee, we've got to do both.

"What we shouldn't do is slavishly respond to too many government targets. The balance has been wrong in the past, but we are re-balancing that with our community beat managers."

On communication, Mr Stephenson admitted that several years ago the police got it wrong when they centralised communications into six centres, doing away with the 28 smaller rooms throughout Lancashire.

Over the past few years, many residents have complained that they struggled to contact the police.

Mr Stephenson explained: "We made mistakes. We over-promised and under delivered. We thought the public would accept it if our performance went down because they would know we were trying to do something difficult.

"But why should they? We mismanaged our communications function despite some fabulous people working in there.

"We under resourced it and got a bit too smart for ourselves.

"We really upset our own police officers. You do that at your peril because police officers are your best sales people.

"Our staff were saying we think our bosses have lost the plot. We have worked very hard to put the wheels back on."

A multi-million pound, hi-tech system called Symposium has helped bring the centres back up to standard in the past six months.

Mr Stephenson added: "Our performance is now better than anywhere else in the country but we are still suffering from that image we lost in the past."

Also in a bid to ensure top bosses know what it is like at the 'sharp end', Mr Stephenson has announced that everyone from inspector and above should complete four hours of foot patrol a month.

In addition, senior officers will visit two victims of crime each week.

"That gives us the opportunity to remind ourselves of what we are dealing with here," he explained.

"It is also an opportunity to see how good or bad we are doing the job. The last time I did that was a couple of months ago.

"I visited two mature ladies from Blackburn, both the victims of robbery.

"One was more frail than the other -- it was clearly going to damage her life. If you are not moved by that there is something wrong with you."

Mr Stephenson, a father of three daughters, works six days a week, but insists the job is fun.

And he is clear about where he wants to take the force before his seven-year contract is up in 2009.

"I want to walk away from this organisation and feel I have made the best stab possible at being the best."