Combine police forces to target national gangs, says crime chief

POLICE forces are not fit to deal with county lines gangs or cyber crime, a police chief has warned, as she blamed a rise in 101 and 999 calls for taking up officer time.

Lynne Owens, the director general of the National Crime Agency (NCA), said police forces should be combined into regional teams to help them tackle and prevent crimes such as slavery and sexual abuse.

She warned that forces are under so much pressure to deal with crime happening on the streets that they are fail- ing to look at prevention.

The warning follows a steady rise in knife crime and violent attacks on the UK’S streets amid concerns that police forces are underfunded.

Speaking to the BBC’S Today programme Ms Owens said: “We currently have a very localised policing response: 43 police forces in England and Wales, 43 chief constables and 43 police and crime commissioners. Of course they are focused on the very local.

“My deep fear is that, if we don’t properly understand the threat from serious and organised crime and build new capabilities at regional and national level we will continue to react to crime, which will take us away from the core principles of the British policing model, which is about prevention.”

She added: “I have huge sympathy with my chief constable colleagues. The demand into 101 and 999 has grown exponentially, so it’s inevitable that they will seek to service that demand. What is valued in our communities is a visible, local policing presence, neighbourhood officers who work ceaselessly to make a difference.”

The NCA recently launched a county lines co-ordination centre to tackle an estimated 2,000 gangs distributing drugs from big cities such as London and the West Midlands to county towns such as Blackpool, York and Telford.

The project, launched last month, is backed by more than £3 million of government funding to help tackle county lines gangs, which use vulnerable children to run drugs around the UK.

But Ms Owens said: “My fear is, if we focus on the very local within these 43 boundaries, we won’t tackle that sort of offending.”

Ms Owens denied she was lobbying for funding to be switched from county-based police forces to the NCA. “My fundamental leadership responsibility is to make sure the whole system is sufficiently funded, from the local to the regional and the national,” she said.