Understanding the needs of our communities

The brother of a murder victim, a sexual abuse survivor and a victim of hate crime were just some of the powerful testimonies heard at a series of events hosted by Essex Police designed to help the force to continue to protect and serve communities across the county.

As part of our continued commitment to listen to our residents and police with their trust and consent, Essex Police hosted its annual Towards Excellence Conference event this week.

This year, our force hosted three smaller events - instead of our usual one - at the heart of the local communities we serve in the North, South and West Local Policing Areas (LPA).

Titled "Progress moves at the speed of trust", the events saw us welcome community leaders, faith groups, our local council and Community Safety Partners, our Independent Advisory Groups, school children, charities, councillors and the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.

Each event was hosted by local policing team leaders and saw powerful discussions and key note speakers including those directly impacted by gang and knife crime, violence against women and girls and sexual abuse.

At the event in Tilbury (West Local Policing area) attendees heard a moving talk from Junior Ugwa, whose brother Michael as stabbed to death by a stranger at Lakeside in 2022. Junior told the audience how he found himself having to deal with mistrusting the police having moved from London to Essex, to finding himself building a relationship and trust with Essex Police detectives as they investigated his brother's murder.

The event also saw the Harlow-based ARC Theatre perform an interactive thought-provoking role-play setting out a scenario where a young school girl was sexually assaulted and her friends helped her reach a decision about reporting the incident to police.

Whilst at the event in Canvey (South Local Policing area), the audience heard from a woman who found herself in a gang, the members of which later sexually exploited her.

In Colchester, there was a significant focus on work surrounding violent against women and girls – and what more can be done, within and outside of policing, with boys and men to make sure they stand up when they see something that isn’t right.

The audience also heard from Independent Advisory Group members – our force’s critical friends, which regularly offer views and provide advice across the county – on how that relationship can be strengthened.

As well as hearing from victims of crime, the conferences also saw community representatives attending including: the Community Security Trust, the Essex Hindu Association, the ARC theatre group, Yellow Door Youth Charity, African Families and members of the Youth Independent Advisory Group.

Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington, who opened all three events, said:

"It has been a real privilege to open all of these events and to see such great attendance and engagement with so many different groups from communities across Essex.

“We are hosting them not to focus on diversity for the sake of it, but to ensure we understand the needs and issues that affect the communities of Essex, whoever they are and wherever they might be.

“In fact, it is the fundamental essence of British Policing as, in the words of Sir Rober Peel - the police are the public and the public are the police with the police being just citizens in uniform whose effectiveness depends upon the approval of the public.

"Put really simply - we need to understand the needs and issues affecting all of our residents across the county to ensure that we can protect them, help prevent them falling victim to crime, support them when they do, and maintain their trust and confidence so that they come forward to tell us what we need to know to catch criminals.

"Understanding our communities – of all ethnicities, of all faiths, of all genders, of all sexualities – helps us police better.”

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