Police chief: I’m using the Al Capone principle’
FORCE WILL USE ALL MEANS TO DISABLE COUNTY CROOKS
THE chief constable of Nottinghamshire said he will use the “Al Capone principle” to target organised crime gangs.
More than £4m of cannabis plants have been taken out of circulation by police during the pandemic in places such as Bilborough, Eastwood, Beechdale and Radford.
Police also uncovered around 1,100 plants at a disused warehouse in Derby Road, Lenton, with a street value of £500,000.
Chief constable Craig Guildford revealed his plans on the day the Office for National Statistics announced the crime figures for the county.
In the year ending December 2020, 90,594 crimes were recorded in Nottinghamshire – 18,299 fewer than the year before.
Mr Guildford said the loss of the night-time economy had played a part but some of it was down to the pursuit of criminals by his force.
He said 100 new officers this year will help him build departments such as the digital forensic unit to “interrogate” dealers’ phones and devices to uncover the extent of their criminal operation.
He said he was adopting the “Al Capone principle” named after the infamous Chicago gangster who made a fortune from illegal activities in the 1920s.
Police arrested him for weapon offences before he was finally imprisoned for tax evasion.
Mr Guildford said: “The Al Capone principle – he was done for tax evasion, not for killing people. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
“For organised crime groups, we identify any area of weakness to disrupt their illegal activity.
“We may stop someone who repeatedly ignores the Road Traffic Act and drives without insurance or due care or attention or under the influence of drugs.
“It disrupts their wider activities. “It makes it harder for them and they will have to trust someone else.
“We are growing in numbers and we will come for you.”
Mr Guildford said the strategy ensured that criminals could not continue to run drug operation successfully.
The recent crime figures show most crime has fallen, including violence against a person, violence with injury, burglary, robbery, sexual offences, bike thefts and vehicle offences.
The only crimes that have risen are homicides – from seven to 13 – and death or serious injury by unlawful driving, up from six offences to 12.
Knife crime has also fallen, with fewer offences recorded than either Derbyshire or Leicestershire.
There were 726 in the year ending December 2020 compared to 812 the year before.
Leicestershire recorded 821 knife offences and Derbyshire recorded 774.
Mr Guildford said his priorities were knife crime, burglary, robbery and drug dealing, including work to counter “burner phones” used by criminals.
He said: “Lots of crime has a footprint – offenders can make arrangements before a crime is committed on the sale of stolen goods or drugs so we need people who can recover that and present it to the courts.
“The phone is a computer in your pocket.
“We need to interrogate the phone and get the information from it.
“There is a lot of information that helps convict people and it takes a lot of technical knowledge to extract it and it is the final piece in the jigsaw.”
He added: “We will bear down on those offenders that repeatedly cause misery.”