Last night I attended a meeting of the Safer Reading Campaign which was by turns interesting and frustrating.
It was interesting to hear Superintendent Steve Kirk dismiss Tory calls for more CCTV in Caversham.
He said, rightly I think that "CCTV is not a panacea...it's not the solution".
Back in February I blogged about that fact that increasing CCTV alone will not cut crime.
This follows a request by Conservative councillors at the last forum meeting in January for consideration to be given to funding CCTV if requested by partners.
The report we received last night confirmed that:
"At a recent meeting of the CDRP Acquisitve Crime Group a full problem solving process was carried out to identify how burglary might be reduced within hotspot areas. The use of CCTVeither covert or overt was not considered as an option and no request from any agency was made for additional CCTV at this time...Currently the issue is not around funding for CCTC, as no request for CCTV has been made by any agency."
Steve Kirk said that the only thing he thought could make an impact on reducing crimes such as burglary was increasing the number of Neighbourhood Police officers in some parts of Reading.
He also said ongoing targeted action by the Police against known, proflific offenders was helping to reduce the number of crimes committed.
This is key. As Police Chief Sara Thornton pointed out in 2006 around 30 people are responsible for most acquisitive crimes in Reading such as burglary.
Superintendent Kirk said he is now in the habit of sending Christmas cards to known offenders - 'we know where you live!' etc
Putting 10,000 "more Bobbies on the beat" to reduce crime and increase community confidence has been longstanding Lib Dem national policy (and again, something I touched on in February.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of the launch of Neighbourhood Policing. It was good to hear Steve Kirk's comments that local Police teams in East Reading and Whitley were beginning to make a noticeable impact on tackling a range of crime issues.
I am hopeful that their good work will be enhanced further following the introduction of a budget for Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) communications, something the Lib Dems successfully got the Labour administration to bring in earlier in the year.
There was some more interesting stuff about graffiti and evaluation of Safer Reading Campaign projects which I'll blog later.
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