Farmer calls for better support from police over rural crime

A farmer has called for better support from the police in the Royal Borough after being left ‘absolutely flabbergasted’ by crime figures supplied by the force.

At the Rural Forum on Tuesday evening, attendees were told that, between September and December last year, there had been 23 rural crimes reported in the Royal Borough.

One location was targeted three times in September.

The figures also revealed that the most common offence in this period was lamping (hunting at night using lamps), with a total of five offences recorded, one offence of poaching and one of residential burglary.

The meeting also heard a WhatsApp group featuring farmers and officers had also been set up for rural crime, and currently has 60 subscribers.

Responding to the police report, William Emmett, farmer and vice chair of the forum said: “I’m absolutely flabbergasted with the report you’ve just given.

“On our WhatsApp group in here, which a lot of people are involved in, there are pages and pages and pages of things that are happening.

“A lot of them are not getting reported because people are sick and tired of waiting on the end of the phone for 101.”

He added: “Nobody uses 101 because you end up spending so long trying to report what has been happening.

“We have had six events on my farm since Christmas. They’re all on here, all on the WhatsApp group, several of them I have reported.

“We are spending enormous amounts of money defending our properties and for you to say there’s only been one reported crime of wildlife is appalling.”

In response, PC Matt Gleave from Thames Valley Police stated that one offence of poaching had been recorded, but those figures did not cover the period since Christmas.

Mr Emmett added that several people in the room live south of Holyport and on Saturdays and Sundays ‘it has become a fortress’ and he has spent ‘quite a substantial amount of money’ on buying large poacher blocks to try and protect his property.

He added fellow farmer Nick Philp has had ‘several instances this week again’.

“We deserve better support than we’re getting,” he said.

PC Gleave stated that the force is aware that it 'does take a long time to get through’ on 101, and there is a web form available to report incidents as well, however he urged farmers to report all emergency incidents to 999.

Council leader Andrew Johnson stated that this is‘entirely the reason why’ the council has committed £240,000 to provide four extra police officers to focus on tackling these sorts of crimes which ‘due to a variety of reasons probably aren’t getting the attention that they should do’.

Farmers Nick Philp and Geoffrey Copas both highlighted the Drift Road area as a hotspot for incidents.

Geoffrey said: “I think we must not underestimate the countryside is a very large area and it’s very difficult for the police to do this.

“There clearly is a hotspot on Drift Road and effectively there are times of the year when this takes place.”

PC Gleave added: “We can’t know where a problem is and these stats aren’t going to show a true representative of what’s actually going on if we don’t know about it, and whether that means dialling it on 999 when it’s happening directly or using the web form if you don’t want to wait 40 minutes on 101.

“Even if it’s just an intelligence report – let us know and we can delve into it, we can dig into it and it builds a picture for where we need to be, and obviously meetings like this tonight, it gives us that in that Drift Road is clearly where it’s happening at the moment.

“But we’re not mind readers, so please do contact us, do tell us about it.

“Obviously, we’ve got the WhatsApp phones, but we’re not always going to be on duty monitoring that.”