The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
New police task force will
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s Police & Crime Commissioner has announced a new task force to tackle drug crime ‘tourist criminals’ targeting the region.
Crime commissioner Jason Ablewhite made the announcement at his ‘monthly surgery’, folowing the results of a three-year operation working in partnership with the National Crime Agency, targeting drug dealing that has resulted in more than 3,000 years of convictions for offenders in our region.
He said: “I am pleased to announce that we will be seeing new programmes being instigated that are designed to tackle drug crime and the carrying of illicit weapons in rural areas as well as in our cities.
“In the past, mechanisms were not in place - other than through the National Crime Agency - to share information easily and quickly. “That’s all changing. “Police forces up and down the land are now working covertly and closely together to tackle criminals in our communities
“Even if they are the so-called ‘criminal tourists’, looking to escape London where the drugs market is saturated, and they are thinking that rural areas are ‘easy pickings’, they are going to be in for a nasty shock when they get here”.
Working in close conjunction with Norfolk Police, Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police in London, Cambridgeshire Police will be sharing information about known criminals and the ways in which they operate in both the cities and the rural parts of the county in an effort to hit the drug-dealers hard before they can establish themselves.
Commissioner Ablewhite added: “Whenever I talk to people face to face, they always say to me that they want to see more ‘bobbies on the streets’ visible policing.
“I understand that, and I sympathise with their wishes; but sometimes that is not the way to tackle drug-related crime.
“Without giving away details of our covert operations, I want to assure the public that we are responding to their calls, we are tackling drug crime, and while sometimes it might not be as visible as they might wish, we are there often in the shadows, where the criminals do their dirty work, and that we are hitting them hard, hurting them, and tackling drug crime on a day to day basis”.