Town where police have given up
Only ten officers for 90,000 people... who now try to solve crime on their own
A TOWN with a population of 90,000 has had its ‘streets abandoned by police’ and been left with just ten officers on duty at a time.
Residents of Hartlepool, County Durham, band together to patrol their neighbourhoods after police failed to respond to a spate of thefts and burglaries.
Locals have taken to solving their own crimes on Facebook after budget cuts saw the number of frontline officers at Cleveland Police slashed by 500 in the past eight years.
Politicians said police had ‘given up’ responding to some calls from hard-working taxpayers and warned that the situation is similar in towns across Britain.
They complain that the Cleveland force receives less funding than more affluent areas while struggling with high crime in Hartlepool, Redcar, Cleveland, Stockton and Middlesbrough.
Just ten officers are on duty overnight in Hartlepool, a coastal town with a population of 92,000, and police cars sit empty because there are not enough officers to fill them. Cleveland Police announced on Monday they were shutting down the town’s custody suite to save money – forcing officers to drive anyone they arrest to Middlesbrough police station 15 miles away.
On a recent Saturday night, all ten police officers were busy dealing with incidents, meaning there was no one left to respond to emergency calls, a BBC News investigation found. At one stage, four officers were driving prisoners to Middlesbrough.
Gas engineer Paul Timlin captured thieves stealing all of his tools on CCTV, but was forced to solve the crime himself because police failed to turn up for two weeks. The 57-year-old grandfather was unable to work when £1,500 worth of tools were stolen from his van outside his house.
Mr Timlin posted footage of the theft on Facebook, and when someone recognised the thieves he contacted a ‘local hard man’ who persuaded them to return the tools.
Mr Timlin said: ‘Posting on Facebook solves crimes quicker than ringing the police. It’s a low-grade crime to the police, but for me it’s £1,500 of tools that are essential for my job. I called the police straight away and went to the station the next day, but was told there were not enough police to cope.’
Another local business owner, Corrine Winwood, 37, said: ‘People post their own CCTV footage of when they have been broken into on Facebook saying, “have you seen this person?” ’
Resident Darren Price helps organise early-morning patrols of the streets in a bid to deter criminals, and says the volunteers are ‘doing the job of the police’.
‘We just want to try and make our area safer. The police don’t come out,’ he told the BBC. ‘We want the people who are coming around our area nicking things to know that there are people walking the streets actively looking for them.’
Hartlepool mayor Allan Barclay said: ‘Criminals are very happy because they know they can get away with it. Policing is now nonexistent for low-level crimes and things like burglaries and shoplifting because the police’s hands are tied by budget cuts.
‘Police have effectively given up on coming out because they just don’t have the resources – victims get a crime number and that’s it.’ Hartlepool’s Labour MP Mike Hill said: ‘Frightened, hard-working taxpayers feel the streets have been abandoned by police. The situation in Hartlepool is typical of most British towns. It is a damning indictment of underfunding up and down the country.’
Police chiefs and politicians say Cleveland’s budget has been ‘cut to the bone’ since austerity struck in 2010. Cleveland Police have closed 12 police stations, triggering protests by residents carrying placards reading: ‘We need to feel safe.’ Over the past eight years, the
force has shed 500 officers, leaving it with a uniformed force of 1,257.
Community policing superintendent Alison Jackson, of Hartlepool Police, said: ‘We make the most efficient use of the resources available to us and those resources are directed to incidents based on levels of threat, harm and risk to our communities.’
Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger added: ‘The Government must sit up and listen to what we are telling them about the crippling impact of their cuts on policing in Cleveland.’
In Bristol, thieves breaking into three vans at one property were caught on CCTV – but the owners claim police refused to investigate or even watch the video.
Darren Smith, 25, said: ‘ The police said they don’t come out to this type of crime and there was nothing they could do.
‘They didn’t want to come out and take the CCTV and they haven’t given me a way to send it to them – I feel let down by it and I don’t feel safe.’
An Avon and Somerset Police spokesman said: ‘The investigator allocated to Mr Smith’s crime emailed him introducing herself, giving her contact details and with a link for him to upload the CCTV. She has had no reply.’