We will listen to every child sex abuse victim, says town’s new police chief

Superintendent Jim Baker urged all current and past victims of child sexual exploitation to come forward, and vowed to help support them in any possible prosecutions.

He said the force would put every effort into investigating any allegation of exploitation and, if the victim comes forward and the evidence threshold is met, then action would be taken.

Superintendent Baker said the focus for the town overall will follow the West Mercia Police overarching priorities – safer homes, safer people and safer roads. The three priorities cover issues as wide-ranging as speeding, protecting victims of domestic abuse, fighting organised crime and preventing burglaries.

“When I moved into the role, I asked myself where the highest harm is, and it’s the children at risk of exploitation," said Superintendent Baker, who has been in the police since 1991.

“That might be criminal exploitation – you hear stories about children being used to sell drugs – but there is a history of sexual exploitation in the area. Right at the top of my threat assessment is protecting children from harm and protecting the wider community from harm.

“It’s a significant issue and the issues that we face today reflect the past. It clearly has high community concern and if the community are concerned about it, we as the police are concerned about it.

“We put every effort into investigating any allegation of child sexual exploitation, and I truly believe that when the victim feels able to support action and the evidential threshold is met, we will take positive action. My plea would be for any current or past victims of CSE to come forward, speak to us, we can support you, work with partners to ensure we minimise the harm going forward and support you in any prosecutions.”

Balancing policing in richer areas of Telford with poorer areas is one of the biggest challenges facing Superintendent Baker, who has been in the role for about a month.

He said: “Certain communities suffer more harm than others. Some of our communities are more deprived. There are significant issues there.

“Some of our other affluent communities might not see that public police activities. One of the big issues I have is balancing public expectations around what some communities need, and what other communities want. That’s probably the most difficult challenge as a modern day policing superintendent.”

Increase staffing numbers are already helping keep the community safe, and more will be coming in the next year or so. More than 300 officers have been hired through funding from West Mercia’s police and crime commissioner John Campion, and some of those are working in Telford. This is in addition to new officers set to join the force thanks to Government pledges. Up to 20,000 new police officers will be hired nationally in the coming three years.

Superintendent Baker said: “We’ve already seen an influx from the PCC's investment earlier this year. The strength of our patrol teams has improved dramatically. When colleagues come on duty, they’re looking around the briefing room. There’s more of them, they feel safer – we feel we’ve got capacity to make a bigger difference.

“Plans are being generated as part of the force planning cycle at headquarters around additional staff that will come from central Government’s increase – we expect that a proportion of those staff will come to Telford and make a different, especially around investigations.”

Gone are the days of dozens of bobbies on the beat, replaced by a new kind of community policing. The main problems facing police today largely happen behind closed doors.

Unacceptable

That means that communities are relied upon by officers to report problems, and a new innovative way of handling that is Operation Snap, which allows people to upload dash cam footage of illegal or bad driving to the internet to be used as evidence.

Superintendent Baker said: “We all use the road – we need to develop a sense of ownership of the roads.

“Many of us now have dash cameras. We need to create this sense that you might not see a police car in your rear mirror, but you don’t know whether the person behind has a dash cam.

“I think we see issues of speeding, but also the issue of risk taking. The risk taking we all see when we drive on local roads is unacceptable.”

He added: “The community recognises that we can’t be everywhere. Many of our priorities are in the less visible areas of policing

“The highest harm may not be occurring in the public space. When I joined the police, the majority of my work was around policing public spaces. What my colleagues do now, our work is about policing private space – the things that happen behind closed doors. I don’t think the community fully understands that, and we need to articulate that more.”