Warwickshire Chief Constable gives PCSOs powers to tackle pavement parking

Speaking at Harris School last night (16 June 2015) Warwickshire's new chief constable, Martin Jelley, said that PCSOs had been given the power to tackle cars parked on the pavement and causing an obstruction. When one local resident asked why there was no response to cases of parked cars he had reported the Police and Crime Commissioner, Ron Ball, said that this was unacceptable.

Other points from last night's meeting:

- There are two ways of measuring the amount of crime being carried out. One is based on the number of crimes that are being reported to the police and the other is based on asking a random sample of households about whether they have been the victims of crime. Both ways of measuring crime suggest that levels of crime fell during the years of the coalition government. Warwickshire police's crime statistics show a welcome decrease in the number of crimes reported to them including burglary cases falling by a quarter. However disturbingly within this overall fall they saw an increase of more than 700 violent offences being reported last year.

- The police force massively underspent last year including an underspend of £7 million on police officers pay.

- Chief Constable Martin Jelley said that the privatised Action Fraud national fraud reporting system set up by Tory Home Secretary Theresa May was not satisfactory

- Local police said they were fairly confident that they had broken up the recent spike in outbuilding burglaries in Rugby with action taken against a group of young males who appeared to be linked to a local drug dealer.

- All of the panel of six people, thre e warranted officers and three civilians, who answered questions from the public last night were male. The probability of an all-male panel of six happening by chance is just one in 64.