Southend: “Maintaining the trust of the local community remains my top priority” – District Commander

Southend’s District Commander, Chief Inspector Jo Collins, has said increasing public engagement and addressing local people’s concerns has helped to improve confidence levels and reduce offending.

Ch Insp Collins also cited the work of the force’s Town Centre Team, the importance of being highly visible in the community, and the strong partnerships forged with public sector partners and the local business community as being key to keeping Southend safe.

Across the district, crime is down by 9.6% with 1,940 fewer offences reported in the year to the end of April. Anti-social behaviour decreased by more than a third (34.6%) in the same period.

In a recent survey, Southend residents had the joint-highest levels of confidence in policing in Essex, the most confidence in the quality of service, and 80% believed that officers were doing a good or excellent job.

Ch Insp Collins said: “When I became District Commander in 2022, I spoke about building local relationships for the benefit of everyone in the district.

“I wanted to challenge the perception that we were only focused on the seafront, increase confidence, and show people that we understood their issues and were there to help them.

“We have worked hard to be visible. We’re running more engagement events in more places than ever before and the feedback from local residents has been encouraging. Maintaining the trust of the local community remains my top priority.”

Significant policing initiatives in Southend include Operation Union – which runs from May to September to deal with summer demand and has so far this year led to 23 arrests for offences including assault and drug possession - and the Town Centre Team’s Operation Raker, which targets the city’s most prolific offenders and has led to 50 prosecutions.

Despite the positive results, Ch Insp Collins said her team are always looking at how they can improve:

“We know we don’t always get it right. When mistakes have been made, we learn from them.

“We have an excellent IAG (Independent Advisory Group) who hold us to account and suggest what we could do better. We had a very successful open day at the police station last year and we’ll be holding another one this summer. That idea came from an IAG meeting.

“Another area we’ve concentrated on is improving levels of communication with victims of crime. Keeping them properly updated is incredibly important.

“We are listening to people and acting on their concerns. We gave the residents’ association in Shoebury an officer they could contact who’d be responsible for their area. They said this has been beneficial.

“We know what an impact anti-social behaviour can have in residential areas, which is why when people made us aware of issues in York Road and Hamlet Court Road we quickly put operations in place.

“Alongside our colleagues in the Community Safety Partnership, we are doing all we can to make sure people in Southend are safe and have the confidence to contact us if they need help.”

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