More for Less Police under Pressure

This programme contains some strong language

If we don't maintain a good performance in this month,

next month and December, then we are in for a torrid time.

British policing is under pressure like never before.

Forces up and down the country must cope with new types of crime,

ever-changing targets

and the biggest cuts to their budgets in modern times.

We have vastly diminishing resources,

we're losing staff hand over foot.

We've got much less money than we had to play with two years ago.

There's very much a feeling back at District that they've just

run out of staff and you're going to have a situation where you've

got literally nobody on.

South Yorkshire Police has more problems than most.

It must rebuild a reputation that's been tainted for 25 years

by the tragedy of Hillsborough.

It must improve its figures for key crimes

that has put it near the bottom of Government league tables.

We are one of the worst-performing forces in the country.

That's not something that I think is acceptable.

I'll walk...how far is it?

The pressure is on - to improve its reputation, to reduce crime

and to do it all with a lot less money.

You're under arrest on suspicion of child abduction. Where is the girl?

We are doing more for less and were trying our best

but there comes a break point, doesn't there?

And that's not just rhetoric from a DCI who's got a vested interest,

it's the truth.

'We've got some plain cars travelling.'

This is what I was talking about before.

'I've seen a beat car.'

In South Yorkshire, crime is falling,

but the force still has some of the highest rates of property crime

in Britain.

The people of Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster

and Barnsley are more likely to be burgled or have their cars

broken into than almost anyone else in the country.

So you've not heard anything?

You just came down and come across it?

Well, the kitchen light was on and I shouted at my husband

and I said "Why is the kitchen light on?"

And then I realised...

-We have locks on every window, even upstairs...

-Yeah.

..because I am very afraid.

So it's...we...I always make sure that everywhere is locked.

It seems to be getting worse.

Burglaries in the neighbourhood...

I don't want you to be living in fear

and you know, because you should feel safe in your home. Do you know what I mean?

WOMAN CRIES

Hello, Mary. It's the police from Ecclesfield.

It's nothing to worry about. I'm with your mum at the moment.

Someone's tried to break into her house

and smashed a window in the kitchen

and she just wanted me to give you a call because she's quite upset.

Because they don't understand the impact

that it has on the people that they do it to, that's why.

These people that do it don't think about the consequences that it has.

Within South Yorkshire, East Sheffield - an area of large housing

estates and high unemployment - has the most crime of all.

In the last three years, policing this area has become even harder

as Government cuts of £33 million have begun to bite.

Detective Chief Inspector Bob Chapman is the head of CID for East Sheffield.

Every morning at Sheffield East, we're up against it.

We're up against it for staff, we're up against it for resources.

We have really quite serious jobs.

Homicide, shooting incidents,

robberies, armed robberies.

You know, we have the whole spectrum of serious crime

but we also have in Sheffield East

a challenging set of communities, if you like, in relation to

burglaries and car crime that occurs in some of those communities.

Every morning, senior officers from across the force meet to

discuss the latest crime figures.

They have daily targets to meet for all types of crime.

Of particular concern for Bob is the high crime rate

in an area of East Sheffield known by its codename, KA.

At Sheffield, Bob?

Last week, we were seven over on dwelling, 15 over

on theft for a motor vehicle, ten over from theft of motor vehicle.

Our main theme problem is car crime

and it all centres around KA

which is Parson Cross, Shiregreen, Firvale.

Which is the same area that you've got a shooting issue,

so in terms of priorities across the force

and resources, then clearly there is a threat there at the moment.

Yes, there is.

KA at the moment is always glowing red in the morning

and we're working hard to try and solve those car-crime problems.

I look at this every day. Yeah, every single day.

This is the weekly performance for last week.

This shows you the crime levels throughout the city.

KA, KB, KC, KD -

which is on the other side, which is west.

The majority of the problems, look, red and amber are in KA.

The expected levels of theft

and motorcycles on East is 11 offences for the week.

We've had 11 in KA alone.

Tonight at ten, there's a sharp fall in recorded crime in England

and Wales despite fewer police.

David Cameron praises forces for doing more with less.

Police numbers are at their lowest for a decade.

I think we should congratulate the police.

As a Government we've asked them to do more but with less resources.

But the news comes on the day the police watchdog is warning

that five police forces will struggle to cope with future budget cuts.

The Government watchdog that inspects police forces,

known as HMIC, has just produced a report on the performance

of all 43 forces in England and Wales.

Just five forces have failed the inspection.

South Yorkshire is one of them.

Police with a warrant.

The total number of crimes may be falling here, too

but by a lot less than in most other forces.

The HMIC inspectors have been particularly critical

of the high rates of car crime and burglary in South Yorkshire.

Recent discussions with HMIC have been...have taken place,

and I think, you know, we would acknowledge that

certainly in terms of some of our volume crimes, particularly

around vehicle crime and burglary, our performance needs to improve.

We are outliers. Christine?

We've been having around 53 crimes a day for burglary dwelling.

We're looking to achieve about 38 per day.

Forecast, as you can see -

it's showing an increase for vehicle offences.

South Yorkshire Police have seen increases of over 2%.

Nationally, we're seeing decreases of around 4%.

We need to be seeing a 10% reduction.

OK.

In terms of the number of burglaries

and theft from motor vehicles, you know, we are

one of the worst performing forces in the country.

I get the arguments that there are a whole

lot of factors around this, around the communities that we serve,

you know, the number of vehicles, the type of housing where the

housing's modern and more difficult to break into

or whether it's older terrace housing that is easier to break into.

You know, the deprivation in some of our communities -

all those things play a factor. I get all that but nevertheless,

my argument will be that I want to, for the sake of our communities, move

our performance away from where it currently is to a far better place.

Andy Holt has just three months to turn things around.

He must bring down crime rates to those achieved by other forces

or risk an intervention by the Government inspectors.

When I look round the talent and the seniority sat around this table,

clearly if we decide something's going to happen

in South Yorkshire Police, then it's going to happen.

So the power rests amongst all of us here.

If we make a decision that we're going to do something,

then quite clearly it will happen.

It'll be down to the officers on the ground to deliver improved figures.

Although we are reducing crime, what they are saying is that we're not

reducing crime fast enough

and they want to see some changes.

They want to see a drastic decrease in crime,

to match forces that they deem to be similar to us

and the bottom line is basically, if we do not achieve what

they're asking us to achieve,

there is a good chance that they will come into the force

and basically dictate what it is we have to do

in order to achieve it.

And they might take some control away from the force.

We have got until I think the middle of November to sort it.

Bob's first move is to set up a new operation

in his most troublesome patch - KA.

We're all here this morning to discuss an operation,

operation KA SNA, which is an operation which has been

drawn up in response to the quite serious problems KA are having

and have had for the last few months and we've got to make this work.

We've got to have and certainly demonstrate

that we can make a significant dint into what's occurring up at KA,

and that is based on the fact that we have vastly diminished resources, as you know.

We're losing staff hand over foot.

We've got much less money than we had to play with two years ago and

that brings its own set of problems, so, I guess I'm asking for a lot.

The day-to-day running of the operation will be

led by Detective Inspector Martin Tate, the head

of the Performance Crime Team, which looks after burglary and car crime.

What strikes me when I come out with these guys

is really how big these housing estates are in Sheffield,

and when you look at all these houses, there's hundreds

and thousands and tens of thousands of houses that we're policing and

we're trying to drive down burglary, and our target is six burglaries

a day for half of Sheffield we've got and that factors in attempts.

If one guy goes down the street and he tries to break into a house

and he's seen, or there's some damage to the window,

quite rightly, it's down as an attempt break.

He might go three doors down -

it might take him three attempts to get into the house.

But all those will go down and that really is our target of six

burglaries a day, and to achieve it, to be under,

when you look at these housing estates, it's a big ask.

To bring their figures down, the team must prevent

the crimes from happening in the first place.

What's your address, mate?

Hello, it's police. Can you let us in the bottom door, please?

Is he upstairs?

Their main strategy is to call on the small number of known

criminals, to warn them off reoffending,

or to arrest them if they've grounds for doing so.

If you are on top of your game

and you know the minority of your prolific offenders,

and you are on top of them and you know where they are,

when they've been released,

what conditions they've got, you're enforcing that through the offender

management side of things - you know, that's the key to this game.

If you have no idea who's committing crime in what area, then that's when

you're going to walk in and you're going to walk into figures

that are going to be through the roof.

The reason that we're here is because anybody who comes out

on a curfew, my job is to make sure that they're behaving themselves.

Are you OK with that?

I'm the burglary sergeant and I hate people who burgle.

You've got form for burglaries and your logged jobs are going through the roof.

Now if you're committing that sort of crime, I will do my absolutely best to send you back to prison.

That's why I am here!

Erm, we've recovered that 50-inch TV.

We've recovered from the kitchen cupboard a Brightlink and a Montblanc.

These are expensive watches, mate, these are about five grand each.

Just lock him up on suspicion of a burglary.

The team make several arrests,

but it's getting harder to run large-scale operations like this.

Policing two or three years ago,

I had a lot more staff,

I had a lot more vehicles than I've got at the moment

and at this time of year, I had a lot more money to spend.

Instead of having three double-crewed cars

I had five or six double-crewed cars,

so we're trying to do a job as it is at the moment with less staff.

You get to a stage where, yeah, if we continue to reduce the numbers,

the vehicles and expect staff to do more,

police officers to do more, then yes, of course there's going to be a breaking point.

Bob Chapman must now show his deputy chief constable, Andy Holt,

that his new operation is working -

that his teams are getting their crime figures down.

I want to just talk through where we're at in terms

of your performance around car crime and burglary.

In terms of what we're doing in the east, our problem has been KA,

which has been the north-east of Sheffield,

we've actually installed an operation called Operation KA SNA.

It's been quite successful in arresting the crime rate.

We've had 56 prisoners in three weeks,

everybody working extremely hard. It's fair to say

that we're actually trying to throw the kitchen sink at it.

Everybody's on message, everybody's got a plan.

We will try our best, our absolute best and you know...

I don't doubt for a minute that everybody is working incredibly hard.

People are working ridiculous hours.

People are really, really going for it.

But not to put too fine a point on it,

we stand or fall in terms of burglary, as a force,

in Sheffield

and if we don't maintain

good performance in this month, next month and in December,

then we are in for a torrid time.

In East Sheffield, the all-important burglary figures are being hit

by a very specific crime, the theft of boilers from empty council houses.

It may not seem like a serious crime but as it's happening several

times a week, the performance team must put a stop to it if they are

to meet their targets.

They discuss an operation to trap the burglars.

The issue that we've got is, the boiler jobs are still

getting done and the last one was a couple of days ago.

Operation Kif

is in relation to looking at a sting/capture house

um, um, at the...in the Winkerbank area.

Can I just ask about the resourcing of it?

-Yes.

-We are having burglaries where boilers are going

but we've got to be happy that putting cops in for two days warrants, you know,

merits what we're going to achieve.

We just need to be happy that we're putting cops in for the right reasons.

Because we didn't anticipate last time

but somebody had the boiler in and out in two and a half minutes.

We might just need to have a think

about possibly a couple more extra staff from somewhere.

So how many have you got, then? How many have you got?

What we're looking at is we've got six.

In an ideal world, we will be looking at eight staff to work on that tomorrow.

You're talking about putting quite a lot of cops in it.

I think two days is probably enough, see if it happens

and then we'll review it - review the intelligence.

Undercover officers are deployed to an empty flat near where the

burglaries have been taking place in the hope that the burglars turn up.

We're all in position.

Two males have walked past property down a ginnel around the back.

We've been here three hours and not much has been happening, to tell you the truth.

I've just been getting us updates, Oscar One has passed

a few messages when people have walked down road or down ginnel.

But I think these have just been passers-by,

nowt too dodgy.

Nobody's looked through windows or owt like that.

So again, just got to sit tight.

We've spent most of the shift in the sting flat.

There has been no activity.

You need luck with it, with any operation like that

so tonight we've just not had that.

Andy Holt is meeting with the officer

responsible for performance to assess the latest figures.

As with crime overall, the levels of car crime

and burglary are down on last year.

But the forces the inspectors will compare South Yorkshire with -

known as their MSG or most similar group -

are reducing their crime figures by a lot more.

I don't know how much you want me to talk about the MSG,

cos it's not brilliant, to be honest -

the MSG position around these issues

and the national positions as well.

All crime will stay the same.

But if you look at burglary dwelling, in terms of...

we've actually degraded and gone above the upper limit on the elected period.

Obviously, you know...

Yeah, this is obviously because the MSG average is going down.

Yes, we still are reducing.

You know, we are picking up the pace of reductions

compared with ourselves but I'm sure HMIC don't want to hear that.

No, I'm sure they don't.

The pressure on Andy Holt to deliver

comes not just from the inspectorate.

These days, the police must answer to elected Police and Crime Commissioners

who face elections every four years.

With the force performing so badly,

the reputation of South Yorkshire's Commissioner Shaun Wright is on the line.

I am well-sighted and am up to speed now with some of the strategies

around tackling volume crime, but I'd very much like to see specific

strategies around the two areas of volume crime that are really

driving which is obviously vehicle theft, vehicle crime and burglary.

I've got a huge concern, having not least seen

the statistics around where we fare in relation to the national figures

but also more recently with the new MSG, and when you compare ourselves

within the new MSG, we're either seventh or eighth in every crime

type or indeed last in every crime type other than violent crime.

So overall, a mixed picture, you know.

Statistics can say lots of different things

but the picture is not looking particularly great at this point

in time, not least when you glance at the table and see so many reds.

It is my hope that with the crime initiatives

we launched in each district, that what we intend to do is,

the very least is not suffer the crime spike that we had

in autumn last year.

I think what we will see is a trend of us

moving in the right direction.

Trust me, I'm not just relying on that spike wholly

but it's certainly going to play an important part in persuading the HMIC that we're on with this.

It's now increasingly likely the force will fail to meet

the reductions the Government inspectors have demanded.

In the past, they could have spent more money

and deployed more officers.

But with £42 million in cuts to deliver, that's just not an option.

Right, first one - local performance update.

Andy Holt gambles on a new strategy.

He will push his officers to work even harder

by doubling the crime reduction targets they must now meet.

I would be the first to accept the targets are really stretching,

but what I wanted to do, and we had the discussion, was to demonstrate

that, you know, we had ambition. You know, it could be levelled at us

that the targets that we previously had, it demonstrated a paucity of

ambition that was just not where we wanted to be

in terms of a step change in our performance.

So I accept that the new targets are challenging in the extreme but

at least everybody should - I'll come back to that later -

everybody should know what we're trying to achieve

and why we have changed the targets.

The changes Andy has made are dramatic.

Instead of reducing car crime by 12%,

officers now have a target of 24%.

For burglary, the figure has gone from a 5% reduction to 31%.

We've listened to the concerns of Her Majesty's Inspectors, we've listened

to the concerns of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the

change of the targets is a visible demonstration of our ambition

and the fact that we recognise the scale of the task before us.

Nobody is making light of the scale of the challenge around the table.

I mean, if I just pick on a couple of the updates.

You know, Shaun, you've had in Sheffield a good week or two

and if that was sustained, then some of these

sorts of figures are perfectly achievable.

So before anyone dismisses any of the targets as

"No, we can't do that", actually, it is doable

but it means everyone has to have their ducks in a row.

Bob Chapman passes on the new targets to his team.

The new targets - we've got to make a 31% reduction

in burglary dwelling between now and 1st April

and that's why they've readjusted it. Because if we make that 31% reduction,

then we would have met the target they have set for us, all right?

Where it says target removed...

That's right, they've replaced it, yeah.

It's the same with vehicle crime and it's the same with all crime, overall crime.

Right.

It is coming down to us. Because you've got

a lot of worried people above us,

it has put pressure on everyone and I think

everyone's a bit more on edge and not as...

I'd like to say, probably happy in their job as they were

because people just feel pressured

and we just think, we're just trying to do our job.

But it feels like sometimes the people above us

have got unrealistic demands and it's us on the front line who have to reduce it

by working hard and I just think, well,

"How can we do more than what we're doing?"

There's only so many hours in the day and there's only

so many hours you work.

I'm not going to work for free and I'm not going to work 24 hours

every single day, so you just...

I just think, "Well, if we're trying our hardest now,

"where is this other percent going to come from?"

There's no doubt about it - the force is sending out a very strong message to us

in the performance world that they want an improvement in performance.

My sector target has been brought down from six burglars a day

to four burglars a day and that's for the east side of Sheffield.

Does that affect the way that I'm working

bar by having that changing target?

I'm not sure it does, because we have a relentless drive on burglary,

we have a relentless drive on robbery.

I can't affect the target in that people will go out and commit crime.

With the new targets in place,

Martin's team must now deliver a 25% cut in car crime.

But right now, car crime in East Sheffield is actually going up

and it's largely down to one man - called Dominic.

You'll no doubt be aware of the intelligence around.

The intelligence is very good, actually.

It's quite specific that he goes out from his father's address,

he looks at vulnerable vehicles, open, unlocked, things on display.

And we'll just see if there's anything a little bit outside

the box we can do, maybe following him or...

It's just resource-intensive.

So we'll have a look at it and see what we can do.

Dominic has no fixed address and is always elusive.

Several teams of officers are sent across the city to look for him.

The key to performance crime

is the relentless nature by which you go after it,

in reducing it, in arresting the main offenders.

But in order to be a success at it

and to keep a lid on it,

if you like, you have to be relentless and never stop

and that's a challenge.

A challenge for a lot of people including myself, really, because

you know, sometimes it does feel like you're on a hamster wheel

that you can't get off.

It takes two days of searching before the team finally find him.

Dominic, come and open the door.

All right, police. Is Dominic in?

Hiya, Dominic. Can I have a word with you, mate? Police.

Just go inside, mate.

Is there anything in this house, this room, that's not yours?

-Er, yeah.

-Yeah? What items?

I've got a sat nav they asked me to save.

-To save?

-Yeah, yeah.

-What do you mean by save?

He just wanted me to hold it for him like, until he come back from work.

Hold it for you? Who's that, then?

My mate Jonathan.

Jonathan who? We need a bit more than Jonathan, mate, don't we?

I understand what you say to me,

you're looking after it for someone but I don't know that, do I?

I know your previous history.

All right, so you're arrested on suspicion of theft of that sat nav.

We'll take you to the station, get your side of it,

-see if it's stolen, then you can tell us who it belongs to and stuff, can't you?

-Yeah.

Right. Come here.

Dominic is found guilty of the theft of the sat nav

but he's soon back on the streets.

His sentence was a 12-month conditional discharge

and, with victim surcharge costs and stuff like that,

a penalty of £75. And unfortunately he's then out of court

and back out and about.

The unfortunate thing is that maybe on Friday, we arrest someone,

put them in front of the court and by next Monday

they are back out causing the same issues because if they are stealing

to fund a drug habit or another lifestyle,

they will keep committing.

A week later, there's another spike in car thefts and once again,

Dominic is the main suspect.

Dominic was obviously out and about.

He's currently wanted for a theft of a motor vehicle.

As you know, he's one of our district's most prolific.

Last time we dealt with him in here, charged him, remanded him

and he knows the system inside out.

He went to court, put his hands up and he got a slap on his wrist,

walk out with no conditions and we've got no control over him again.

Yet again, the team must go and find him.

It's my first involvement in this

but we've obviously come on a couple of hours earlier than we would

normally do, for obvious reasons - to try and get him before he wakes.

The area particularly is suffering from an increase in vehicle crime

and we believe this lad certainly is responsible.

(Wait here. I'll check it's the right house.)

I don't know whether you can make this out

but there's an electric supply - there's a portable heater.

The intelligence was that he was flitting between the house

and the shed but because of his nocturnal habits, it was more

conducive to stay in the shed but it doesn't look like he's in.

Has he been stopping here? No?

Right, we're out of here, then.

We could be back. We can't say we can't be back

because if we get more information he's here again, we will be back

so all right - let's go back and regroup.

He may well surface as a result of calling there this morning.

And this young lad we're chasing, chasing, chasing -

for ever, it seems. It is a lot of time and effort.

This morning certainly was, one might say, a waste of time

and there might be more wastes of time before we finally arrest him.

It will appear on figures every morning,

people will question every morning what's happening with it,

what's happening with him, which obviously keeps the pressure on

to arrest him and usually at some point, we do get lucky.

The force's senior command team are meeting to discuss

the new tougher targets.

Head of HR Ian Watson is responsible for the welfare of officers

and has been getting feedback from staff.

The targets last week were changed.

That's to meet the requirements

to make sure that we are seen, at least,

to be working aspirationally -

which we are - towards the targets set by the HMIC

to get off their radar.

So the target for total crimes, down 8% and it's now down 10%.

-Right.

-Is that doable?

I think it extremely difficult and very challenging

but we need to be aspirational and HMIC are coming back to see us

on the 25th and 26th of November

and we need to be in a position where we are seen to be trying

the best we can to achieve those targets to remain off the radar.

I agree completely with that but it just seems an unrealistic target.

That we're never going to achieve.

I'm sorry to throw that in but that's...

No, no, I think that's the discussions...

Well, I know that's the discussions that we've had

as a force ourselves last week.

It feels to me, just having that across-the-board target,

certainly the feedback I'm getting back in terms of the staff

on the ground is that they feel it's completely unrealistic.

In order to meet the HMIC demands on us, that is the force target.

The target that's been set is to achieve

what we need to achieve to come off the radar.

I think the point is, we have to give it our best shot.

I agree with that,

but that is - and I think that people feel that it's -

a very unrealistic target.

By 1st of April next year to reduce by 10%,

if we're being honest, it is an unrealistic target.

I absolutely agree with you in that, you know - really challenging,

you know, bordering on unrealistic targets -

but that's the message that they're giving us.

HMIC saying that the targets you set yourself, you know,

are not stretching enough, because even if you achieve those targets,

they're not going to get you to a place where we think you should be.

Whether we like it or not, we are where we are

and those are the targets that we need to achieve if we are going

to come off the radar and the intervention that's looming ahead.

Those are the targets we have to achieve.

'This is a direct quote -

' "I and the people of South Yorkshire

' "are entitled to expect better."

'Those are the words of Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright.

'The South Yorkshire ranks in the top five in the worst performing

'forces nationally in terms of overall crime per 1,000 population.

'The PCC says,

"I want to see improvements and I want to see them fast."'

With pressure on the force mounting,

Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright

issues a stinging attack on his own officers.

Calling the force's performance unacceptable, he tells them

he is entitled to expect better

and they should step up to the mark, do more and do it faster.

'And I just don't think that enough speed is being made.

'We're falling further behind, we're not actually closing the gap

'and I just believe, as the Police Commissioner for South Yorkshire, that the public

'of South Yorkshire should expect and deserve the very best that we can give them.

'If we don't do it at a local level, then obviously the Government

'and HMIC will have something to say about it

'and I'm very keen that we do this.'

Personally, it's quite bruising when your Police and Crime Commissioner

makes comments like that.

Professionally, we have to listen

to what has been said

and respond to that.

There's been quite a lot of fallout in terms of how our staff

have reacted and how they feel about it.

The feedback that we've had is that officers felt that they were

being criticised for not working hard,

for not doing a good job and I think that they felt very

bruised by that and they felt that the Police and Crime Commissioner

wasn't giving them credit for the work they were doing.

I think, I'm not going to get political, but I think

certain people need to realise just exactly what the reality is.

A large part of my job at the moment is to keep morale going

and that for me is a significant challenge, because we're almost

caught up in a perfect storm. You've got police officers

who are having their pensions cut, told they're going to have to

work for a lot longer, constantly told by the Government and the media

that they are no good and then they're expected to double their targets.

Well, they're trying extremely hard to do that

and they will never stop but it's really, really hard.

Delivering those targets has just become more difficult.

Overnight, a new job has come in.

Basically, it appears like we had a group of youths walking

down Limeminster Road last night intent on damaging

anything that came into their path. I'm told there was 20 vehicles

that had been damaged, windows smashed, wing mirrors smashed off.

It would appear that a resident

quite rightly decided that they weren't happy with this

and decided to follow them in their Mercedes CLK.

The youths obviously realised they were being followed.

They managed to stop the car.

The male complainant went out, he was assaulted,

his wife was dragged out of the car and they stole the Mercedes,

the silver Mercedes, from the couple and drove away in it.

We have got further enquires continuing and my team have

been given the job of taking that and investigating that this morning.

Are we counting that as one crime?

It's going to have a major impact

and we quickly need to get to the bottom of what's behind this

because we can't afford to have more nights with that level of crime.

We need to get them into custody as quickly as possible.

Have you got any capacity to give us house-to-house, or have you got people on afternoons?

I'm just wondering whether that might be a bid to force...

This is for me the top priority, the people in that area, that number of

vehicles damaged and someone's been beaten and car stolen following it.

There will be significant expectation on us

and I'd like us to deliver on that.

We're faced with what we're faced with.

We can put in all the patrol plans,

all the visibility plans,

all the crime operations together that you like.

But we cannot legislate for somebody going berserk...

..one night

and seemingly committing all those offences in one ten-minute period.

That's the way it goes. You have to live with the rough and the smooth

and at the moment, we're going through a bit of rough.

Certainly for the past few months.

Do you want to listen to that call?

Detective Constable Liz Claridge

will lead the investigation to find the culprits.

-'Information team.'

-'Hello, I'm on Limeminster Road, Sheffield.

'There's a group of boys and they're smashing the cars up.

'Oh, they've hit my husband! They're attacking my husband.

WOMAN YELLS

'Ooh!'

SHOUTING

One of the males, that name has been given, is currently

wanted for a serious assault anyway.

In fact, two serious assaults.

So he's currently circulated so he can be arrested for them.

I think there's a group of them

but perhaps not all of them have caused the damage but those people

have gone up there, caused damage to 11-plus vehicles.

Each of them is a separate crime report,

which obviously affects statistics of how

severe crime is but it's one person doing it to all those vehicles.

And then with a serious assault, that will need to be crimed as well.

So your crime statistics for the weekend have just gone

through the roof but it's all the result of one person doing it.

The search for the perpetrators is resource-intensive.

Statements must be taken, forensics done,

victims interviewed and suspects hunted down.

-Is he boyfriend of...?

-I don't know. Till I speak to him, I don't know.

OK. Do you have a telephone number for her or anything

-that we can speak to her on?

-No, she's not in.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on a minute.

What you doing? Have you got a warrant for doing that?

-Hang on a minute.

-No! No warrant, get out now!

-We've got information...

-I've got kids in here. Get out!

-We've got a power of entry.

-Show me your warrant.

-We have a power of entry. Sector 17 of PACE.

-Show me your warrant.

We can come in if we want to.

-No, get away.

-It's a serious incident we're looking at.

-He doesn't live here!

-OK, but we believe...

He's barred from my house.

-OK.

-Give me your card and I'll get her to contact you.

-OK.

-Right.

-OK.

With the suspects of the assault still at large, yet another job

comes in that will stretch the resources of Bob's team even further.

'A takeaway pizza driver found stabbed to death at the wheel

'of his car was making his final delivery before starting a new job.

'This is the place that Pavesha came to deliver his final pizza.

'But he never even made it out of the car before he was killed.'

I'm just going to have a quick listen to this, guys.

A murder investigation has been launched last night.

It's a category A murder.

The MITs are going to be running it from Robert Dyson House, however,

and they will need staff from us

and we will have to get those staff from across Sheffield.

All right. That's as it stands at the moment.

If things develop, then obviously I might need to review that

in relation to staff but that's where we are. All right?

As you can probably gather, I'm extremely tired

cos I've been on all night but there's no sympathy, is there?

Murders are investigated by the Major Incident Team, the MIT,

but they are also short of officers,

so Bob will have to give up some of his team to help out.

The staffing implications are that I...

Because it's a Sheffield East job,

the MIT will be coming to loan some staff from Sheffield East.

Murder, serious incidents, threats to people's lives will always,

always come first but we cannot lose sight of the fact that we

have these targets to meet and we are duty-bound to meet them.

It's about juggling staff and juggling resources

and you know, trying to achieve everything, really.

On days like today, can you do without these targets?

Could I do without targets?

Of course. Of course I could do without targets

but targets are here to stay, aren't they?

The search for the youths who assaulted a man

and damaged 20 cars is picked up by Detective Inspector Martin Tate.

There's a job I want to go through from the weekend

that's quite annoyed me, actually.

Being dragged out your own car and given life-changing injuries

isn't very good behaviour

and we're not going to have it, basically.

So we need to have them all in today, or as many as possible.

We've got a list of addresses, names

and now that we know what numbers we've got,

we'll split up into teams

and let's go make it happen as we do.

So I want them to have an unpleasant day today.

There's no knocking on doors and walking away.

If we think they're in that house,

the door comes off and we go and get them.

The team have the names of several members of a gang

they want to question.

And you've lived here since August this year or last year?

-Last year, just over a year.

-Cheers.

Do you know where he is, mate?

We need to speak to him about a serious incident on Friday night.

It's a really nice couple that are the victims here

that have done fuck-all wrong.

Where does his girlfriend live?

Morning, mate. Police from Ecclesfield. Nowt to worry about.

Yeah, is she in? More importantly, is ... here?

-Yeah.

-I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

All right. Police from Ecclesfield.

You're under arrest, all right, for a...

Two section 18 woundings and numerous criminal damages.

All right? The arrest is necessary for a prompt and effective investigation.

Today, we've had three arrested.

Two from yesterday.

So we've got five prisoners and currently we have about

three members of staff to work on it.

We have two more coming in this afternoon.

But obviously at this stage, more suspects than there is officers

working on the case.

So it's difficult at the moment, yeah.

The East Sheffield performance team

are going out once again to look for known suspects.

They're joined by other units in a final effort to bring

the figures down before the HMIC deadline.

We've asked for everybody in the department to come out

for one day and basically, we know the activity on the estate -

there's loads of drugs, there's loads of stolen vehicles, there's loads of stolen property.

There's all the usual targets. Proactive have generated some warrants so there's loads

and loads of stuff to go at in KA.

It's a massive area

and we're just going to put as much resources as we can.

So there's plenty of opportunity to send a message out as well

and that's what we're trying to achieve.

What I would like to see today is...

I know we're going to go out there and we're going to make it happen.

What I don't want to see is people sat back in the office

while others are out grafting.

I know that's not going to happen

but I want to make sure that that message gets across.

We're going out as a team, we're going into a particular area

and we're going to do what we do best -

going out there and stopping and searching these people -

and let's get out there and do it.

We've got - probably, realistically - the last opportunity to make

a difference that's going to be felt in time for the HMIC revisit.

DIT to any unmarked vehicle at Spittle Hill.

Please stop a vehicle that's trying to avoid us.

It's failed to stop for officers yesterday in our burglary area.

The burglar from 660. I've just seen him walking down Whiteways.

He'll be heading down towards Paige Ormates.

The sooner that we search you guys, the sooner you leave, yeah?

The point I'm going to make to HMIC is that

this is a force that gets on and delivers.

And don't think that we are not up for the challenge, because we are.

We've got a prisoner - one adult female -

coming in as part of this operation.

MUSIC DROWNS SPEECH

It looks OK but if we split that to sectors,

Sheffield West is getting hammered.

There's some significant reduction around those other areas.

In relation to vehicle crime...

I think there's still a huge number of challenges there.

Do I think that we're going to be able to demonstrate those -

what's the phrase, "clear green shoots"? -

I think it's still on the edge. Still on the edge.

I don't mind saying we were worried about how we would

achieve the targets that they're setting us.

It's very difficult. We're not trying to sell X amount of clothing,

we're not trying to sell so many cars in a month,

so performance targets are very difficult, sometimes,

in terms of actually reducing crime.

I think sometimes what we need is,

to reduce that crime and bring it down,

we just need more of us doing the same as what we're doing.

You know, there's loads of people out today. If we had more cops,

we could do this more often.

If we had more finances,

we could put the money towards these proactive patrols.

Always have these things put to us about, we need to do more for less.

I think the reality is we all know, and I think the public know

sometimes, the only thing you get for less is less.

For three months, South Yorkshire Police has put everything

into improving the figures for car crime and burglary.

They're still near the bottom of the national league tables

and they're still falling short of their targets.

But nevertheless, Andy Holt's strategy to double those targets has paid off.

It's done enough to persuade the Government inspectors

they're on the right track.

The force presented itself very well.

We were very pleased with the progress that's been made

and it's clear that the force -

and people around this table and others -

understand the challenge that you're facing and have

girded your loins, to use a typical HMIC expression,

to meet that challenge.

Stuart uttered the challenge to me about

the "clear green shoots of performance"

and I'm very pleased to see that's precisely what we've got.

We have the green shoots of performance

that are most definitely coming through.

Let's not get too complacent.

The fight goes on and the trajectory

is now a far better trajectory than it was but actually

you know, crimes per 1,000 population

and per household in terms of burglary and car crime

is still a challenge to us and in comparison to others in our MSG

and others up and down the country,

we still have much improvement to make.

With the threat of intervention over,

the performance crime team get on with what they always do.

Police!

Give me a list, then, of what you think has been taken.

Three ladies' gold bracelets. They're mine.

They must now keep up the pressure to reduce the crime figures

but with ever-decreasing funds.

It won't be easy in the age of permanent austerity.

I think the Government would like us

to continue doing absolutely everything we're doing now

and more with these budget cuts.

We're just about managing it

with a 20% cut. If they cut again, there is no way, and the public...

We would have to be quite honest with the public

about what it is we can do

and what we can't do and I think they will be quite shocked

at actually what we WON'T be able to do should we get cut any more.