This week long campaign was launched by actor Nick Miles who plays Emmerdale’s Jimmy King.

Community police officers will be holding events throughout the week.  They will be at stands at local shows and events, making farm visits and hosting pop-up surgeries in villages to speak to people about rural crime and raise awareness of the issues faced by our rural communities.

Wildlife and Rural Crime Officer, Julie Turrell, said, “Humberside Police are well equipped to deal with the challenges of rural crime.  When crimes are committed in rural areas high-value property such as farm machinery is often stolen or damaged and we are committed to working to prevent this type of crime occurring. Investigating and dealing with a crime in a rural area can be very different to dealing with a crime in an urban area.  The issues and challenges can be quite different, as can the type of offences themselves.

“The 26 trained Wildlife Crime Officers (WCOs) know how to deal with these types of offences and as part of our ongoing commitment every Community Beat Manager and dedicated Police Community Support Officer covering a rural area will receive training; and they, in turn, can help their colleagues in the correct way to deal with wildlife and rural crimes.

“Through the winter we ran a very successful operation targeting poachers and hare coursers.  We used a variety of tactics and prosecution methods and as a result reported 36 people for summons, issued 46 directions to leave an area, seized 6 vehicles and secured 11 Criminal Behaviour Orders at court.  Whilst I am not naive enough to think we have stopped the problem we have shown our commitment to rural communities and the problems they experience. 

“So what is a ‘rural crime’, well it is a crime like any other such as burglary, theft or arson, but that happen in a rural location, in addition to these it includes wildlife crimes such as hare coursing, badger baiting, poaching, heritage crime, livestock injury or theft, to name but a few.  When crime occurs in a rural location it has a major impact on the victim.  It impacts their livelihood and their ability to do business.  It also creates a fear of crime in isolated locations and a feeling of being cut off from support.  All the more reason for us to get out into our villages and speak to the people directly affected by this type of crime.
 
“We have organised a variety of events throughout the East Riding, North and North East Lincolnshire so that people can have an opportunity to meet officers and to speak to them about things that matter to them.

“Officers are at these events to give out crime prevention advice and get to know the people they serve, they are there to help people on how to best protect themselves and to listen to their concerns.

“I would encourage anyone to go along to these events and see what we can do together to help prevent crime.”

Farmers are encouraged to join their local Farm Watch scheme in the East Riding and Country Watch in North Lincolnshire.  These schemes encourage farmers to work together against rural crime.  They are supported by the police who have the ability to alert farmers to the sightings of criminals in the area via text so that they can be on the look-out and report any incidents of crime.  Farmers are also key in providing intelligence to the police who can then act on information they have provided.

For more information on joining Farm Watch or Country Watch please contact SPOCRuralandWildlifeCrime@humberside.pnn.police.uk for us to put you in touch with a scheme in your area.

We would like to ask residents, whether from the farming community or not, to keep their eyes open and report anything suspicious by calling the non-emergency number 101.  If someone sees a crime in progress always call 999.

For more information about your local rural crime prevention advice please visit the Humberside Police website on 

http://www.humberside.police.uk/issues/wildlife-rural-crime