Questions for police over rural crime response
Thames Valley Police has faced questions over the number of officers it has available to tackle rural crime in Windsor and Maidenhead.
Police Sergeant Catherine Griffiths spoke to members of the farming community during the council’s rural forum meeting on Tuesday, March 19.
Sergeant Griffiths, based at
Windsor Police Station, told the meeting that the force is facing a range of crimes in the area including hunting and lamping – a practice where high-powered lights are used to flush out nocturnal wildlife at night.
Farmer William Emmett vented his frustration over a perceived lack of response from the police when reporting live incidents of rural crime.
He said: “The police are there, somewhere, but don’t appear to be there when you really need them. In the south of Maidenhead we have this constantly with four-wheel drives driving across crops.
“I’ve said this before and I will keep saying. I saw my borough council tax come in, I pay £400 to the Thames Valley Police force. We want to see better service for the money we’re paying.”
He added: “We were promised by the previous administration and the police and crime commissioner, four additional police for this borough.
“What has happened to this promise? It never seems to have materialised.”
Farmer William Westacott, based in Littlewick Green, also questioned whether rural communities had been ‘forgotten’ in East Berkshire due to Thames Valley Police’s Rural Crime Taskforce being based in Oxfordshire.
Sergeant Griffiths responded: “I wouldn’t say its forgotten about. There’s neighbourhood officers that work out of Windsor but there’s less crime here compared to West Berkshire of a rural nature.”
She told the meeting the force currently has one police constable on the force’s mobile rural crime team but a further 10 officers on the Rural Crime Taskforce are available if there is specific intelligence available on an ongoing issue.
The meeting heard how 26 rural crimes have been reported to police in Windsor and Maidenhead between December and February.
This included six reported lamping offences.
The most common rural crime in the borough currently is wildlife crime, which mainly involves catapults being aimed at wild birds, Sergeant Griffiths added.