Feedback Re Criminal Damage

Regarding thecomment by anonymous person on the GTS blog, enquiring about what can be done about the criminal damage in GTS, I asked, what can be done? Ray Stannard (Crime reduction officer) said regarding graffiti, that the police have a “Graffiti” file of tags which can be matched to names. Such damage needs to be reported to the police so they can photograph it for the files before it is cleaned off. Furthermore, if the culprit has eg cut themselves and dripped blood anywhere, please don’t clean it up, as it’s a good source of evidential DNA. In other words, don’t tidy up the mess until the police have attended. Re offensive graffiti. If you feel you must clean it off because it’s too offensive to leave, at least take some photographs yourself. Also, particularly in the rural locations, such damage tends to be by local people, and several people are aware of just who is responsible. But unless they are willing to make a statement, then there is little the police can do about it. Heather said that people just aren’t reporting crime, not just criminal damage, but burglaries as well. She urged coordinators to make good use of the PCSOs and tell them what is going on, at the time, even if the information goes no further than the PCSO’s head or pocket notebook. Then it can slot into the bigger picture. Ray reiterated this, saying that resources are allocated according to need, and a place with only two reported pieces of criminal damage is going to get less attention than a place with 10 recorded incidents. So underreporting leads to under-resourcing, which means the problem is less likely to get sorted.

Hope this helps