Drop in crime sees Bognor residents feel safer

Inspector John Merrick said law-abiding residents should be enjoying the benefits of the reduction in incidents.

"If you look at the crime figures, Bognor is safer now than it was five years ago.

"The feedback I get from meetings is that people are commenting upon how safe they feel."

His assertion is based on the first decline in violent crime in public places around the town for a long time. It went down in the year to the end of March by 46 incidents, or five per cent, to 822 crimes, to buck a national trend which has seen drink-fuelled crimes rising.

"This is the first year in many that the number has fallen," said Insp Merrick. "It has consistently gone up year after year even as other crime has gone down.

"It's really pleasing to see that reduction. Over the last 12-18 months, we have had a dramatic improvement in the town centre and along the seafront on Friday and Saturday nights.

"About two or three years ago, we had one of the highest incidents of grevious bodily harm on the western downs division.

"But they are no longer regular occurrences. They are a rarity, which is the way it should be."

He attributed the reduction to putting more officers on the streets, close working with licensees and greater use of intelligence-led operations.

"I know there's going to be the perception based on the national media about gun crime and knife crime that affects peoples' views wherever they live, regardless of what is happening.

"But we don't have a problem with knife crime in the town or gun crime on the streets.

"The firearms incidents we do get are usually where a member of the public has seen someone with what looks like a gun. It is often a ballbearing gun or an airgun.

"We don't have a gang culture in Bognor either," he stated.

There were four arrests in Bognor in the year to the end of last month for firearms incidents. They referred to the possession of a firearm or intention to use it in a public place.

The same period saw 43 reports of offensive weapons. Four were no crimes and 19 resulted in individuals being charged or summoned to appear in court.

The term 'offensive weapon' covers a wide class of items from a screwdriver to a razor blade to a knife. The decline in violent crime helped to send total reported crime in the town for the past year down by 227 incidents to 4,899.

Thefts of cars went down to 308 incidents to give a reduction of 30, or 8.8 per cent.

Criminal damage was another success story. They fell to 1,244 for a 12.6 per cent decline, or 179 incidents.

Insp Merrick said the knowledge and presence of the neighbourhood specialist teams of PCs and police community support officers had played a large part in this success.

The one key area of crime which had risen was domestic burglaries. They went up by 18 to 172 or one every two days on average.

Insp Merrick attributed the increase to a surge of break-ins last summer when several known burglars were released from prison.

They had since been put behind bars again after a mixture of police uniformed and covert operations.

This helped cut the number of burglaries back in recent years but not enough to send the annual total below the previous years.

'I am disappointed by the increase,' he said. 'I realise that burglary is an awful crime for anyone it occurs to. We carried out an lot of work in the summer.'

Among the overall good news about crime was a rise in the detection rate during the past year by officers at Bognor police station.

This went up to 34.3 per cent after briefly touching 45 per cent '“ or almost one in two crimes '“ during one period.

The success ensured that more than 300 offences were solved, even though fewer were reported, compared to the previous 12 months.

The level of detections placed Bognor in the top ten of the 43 sections of Sussex Police and second '“ by just 0.3 per cent '“ to Chichester in the west downs division.