20 Jul, 2017 16:47 News

Today the Office for National Statistics released its latest set of crime stats for all forces across the country. For Surrey they show an 8% rise in total recorded crimes which is below the average rise for both the South-East region, and across England and Wales.

Last year there was an increase of 3% for reported sexual offences, however Surrey remains the county with the fewest serious sexual assaults per 1000 residents and we’re seeing more positive outcomes for victims, we’ve risen to fourth place nationally up from the bottom of the rankings in 2015.

Detective Chief Inspector Tim Shaw, force lead for rape and serious sexual assault said of the ranking, “We’ve come a long way from the critical findings of previous reports from HMIC in 2015 and this improved ranking highlights the continued commitment we have all made to pursuing dangerous offenders and protecting some of our most vulnerable victims. We need to build on this momentum and focus on ensuring that alongside our investigative work we are also providing the best possible support and guidance to safeguard our victims.”

For the first time in 10 years the decline of domestic burglaries in Surrey halted and started to increase during the second half of the last financial year resulting in an increase of 31%. As a direct result we have been seeking to address this increase through a variety of means including building intelligence packages around problem offenders, deploying forensic marking kits which have been so successful in London, and focussing our Serious and Organised Crime Unit on the criminal gangs that we know are impacting on burglary in the county.

Since starting this intervention in May our officers have made over 40 arrests related to burglaries and have a further 43 outstanding suspects who we are currently pursuing. Additionally it should be noted that last month we saw a 9% reduction in this increase of burglaries – showing that our response is turning the tide.

The statistics also show that there was a significant increase in possession of weapons (+41%) and public order offences (+42%). With regard to possession of weapons the increase appears to have been generated by an increase in knife offences. This has been spread across the county but has been caused by an additional 92 offences in Surrey during last year. We have been proactively using targeted stop and search powers to help tackle the rise of offensive weapons and we are currently taking part in a national knife amnesty.

Our message to those who carry a knife, or are thinking of carrying one, is that a knife does not protect you, will make you more vulnerable placing you in danger of serious harm – and we are actively targeting you.