EVERY so often I spend time going out with the local police, joining them for a few hours as they go about their work, keeping all of us safe. Its time well spent. Not only do I get to chat through the local policing issues, but I also get an opportunity to spend a few hours with frontline police, chatting about how they work, what their pressures are and how we can make their work easier and even more effective.

Crime has changed over the years. It seems that long gone are the days when a thug would hold up a post office with a sawn-off shotgun. These days crime happens over the internet, or is directed at vulnerable groups. One such vulnerable adult crime has been criminals posing as police officers, contacting pensioners to say that their bank account has been hacked and that they should withdraw all their money as soon as possible and when done, they should hand the money over to the police for safe keeping. The imposter police turn up and collect the money, to then vanish into the night with a pensioner’s savings. The good news is that banks are onto this so when they see someone withdrawing all their money, they alert the police, but educating potential victims about this type of crime is all part of police work.

One of the more unsavoury developments has been the migration of hard criminals from cities to rural areas, taking over local drugs gangs and bringing a significant increase in drugs related crime. There has been some violence, but this is restricted to gang members. Meanwhile, petty crime, such as shoplifting, has been increasing as drug users seek to feed their habit. But to resolve this problem, a ‘whole of crime’ approach needs to be adopted – police supported by drug rehabilitation centres and big chain shops putting on security guards.

Our police do an incredible job, from outreach programmes with community groups to keeping us all safe all the time. They do it on the context of changing technology and crime patterns. All too often, they are doing in the face of antagonists, who, for some bizarre reason, think it is OK to abuse them while they do their job. They are our friends, our allies and all they want to do is serve us all.