Preventative and proactive efforts stopping the spread of violence 'disease' across Nottinghamshire

Proactive policing to take more weapons of the streets and targeted prevention work through the Violence Reduction Partnership have helped Nottinghamshire buck the national trend of rises in these crime types.

The latest Office for National Statistics figures showed violence with injury reduced by 3 per cent in the last financial year.

Knife crime also fell 2 per cent in the same period. The drop was even sharper when compared with pre-Covid levels in 2019-20, at 9 per cent.

Meanwhile, possession of weapons offences increased by 32 per cent as a result of continued proactive policing, with two dedicated knife crime teams having a high success rate in stopping and searching suspects and recovering weapons.

Mrs Henry said the VRP treated violence like a disease, putting preventative measures in place to stop it spreading.

She said: “Every incident of violence is one too many, but it is encouraging to see violence with injury and knife crime falling, while more weapons taken off our streets.

“This is a result not only of the enforcement work of Nottinghamshire Police, but the prevention work carried out by the VRP and other agencies.

“Police enforcement alone does not stop violence. Here in Nottinghamshire we take a public health approach to reducing serious violence, which recognises we must tackle the root causes.

“It treats violence in the same way as a disease; recognising the symptoms, understanding the causes and stopping the transmission. It uses interventions aimed at building community resilience to violent crime and changing social norms, using intelligence to interrupt the transmission of violence by analysing where it may happen and intervening with those at higher risk.

“This involves police, social services, mental health services, drug and alcohol services and many others, working together to prevent violence happening in the first place.”

Alongside the prevention work, Nottinghamshire Police is proactive in enforcement.

Supt Kathryn Craner, force knife crime lead, said: “Taking knives and offensive weapons off our streets remains a key priority for the force as we look to make Nottinghamshire a safer place. Proactive policing has been central to our approach.

“We are one of only a handful of police forces who have two dedicated knife crime teams, with these specialist officers spending their shifts carrying out proactive patrols to close in on and stop potential knife carriers.

“The team carry out intelligence-led stop and searches on suspects that recent police intelligence suggests could be involved in weapon-enabled violence.

“In addition to knives, there has also been a focus on seizing offensive weapons, such as knuckledusters, Samurai swords and zombie knives, that are now illegal for anyone to keep in their home or have in a private place.

“Within each of our neighbourhood policing areas, we also have teams of officers working as part of Operation Reacher, who carry out targeted patrols and warrants across Nottinghamshire in a bid to identify offenders, including those involved in weapon-enabled crime.

“All this proactive police work has resulted in more suspects being arrested for possession of weapons offences in Nottinghamshire and allowed us to take more of these dangerous weapons off our streets.”