Thames Valley Police chief constable Jason Hogg says force has had ‘good year’ after 2023/34 statistics released
Thames Valley Police’s chief constable has stated that his police force has had a “good year” after it released its statistics for the last 12 months.
Chief constable Jason Hogg has spoken to newburytoday about how he felt the last year has gone for his officers and staff.
He was pleased with the progress they had made in cracking down on different areas of crime - particularly road and drug offences - but he also set out areas he wants TVP to improve upon in the future.
Mr Hogg said: “I think we’ve had a good year here in the Thames Valley.
“We’ve worked tirelessly being available to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“We’ve arrested more criminals; we’ve charged more criminal offences; we’ve stopped and searched more people on the streets and levels of burglary and car crime are still historically at a very low level.”
One of his highlights has been the decrease in knife crime, with 10.8 per cent less knife enabled crimes in the Thames Valley this past year.
He said: “That has been a priority for us, and an outcome of that is there are less young men being stabbed and killed in our streets.
“We have been seen as a leader and a positive outlier by the Home Office about driving down homicide and serious violence.
“Another priority has been violence against women and girls.
“The figures around charged for rape and sexual offences are going in the right direction (17.4 per cent increase in rape charges and 13.6 per cent increase in other sexual offences charges) and we are making improvements in those areas.”
One of the big talking points from 2023’s statistics was roads policing, which saw a massive jump in recorded offences when compared to 2022.
Officer enforced speeding was up 46 per cent, driving without due care and attention was up 57 per cent, driving while distracted with a mobile phone was up 63 per cent and not wearing a seatbelt was up a whopping 67 per cent (all of these road policing statistics were taken from the 2023 calendar year, while the rest of the TVP stats were taken from the 2023/24 financial year).
Mr Hogg stated that this increased focus on roads policing had been a conscious step by TVP.
He said: “We’ve had 58 people killed on our roads in the past year. 58 families who have been grieving for the loss of a loved one, which is still far too high.
“It is a reduction from previous years, but when I go speak to members of the public and community meetings or at local councils, people talk about road safety and speeding more than anything else.
“This is why we now have a proactive policing unit arm which focuses on those roads where accidents are happening.
“I have asked them to really improve the use of their powers, which is why we have seen more people getting tickets and prosecutions for no seatbelts, distracted driving, speeding and a real increase in drink and drug driving as well.
“It has been an intention to improve our prosecution rates in those areas.”
Another big increase was the amount of drug trafficking prosecutions made by the force, which increased by just over a quarter.
Mr Hogg said that the Thames Valley has many unique attributes that mean its officers need to be effective at dealing with drugs crimes.
He said: “We are surrounded by nine different police forces. We have more mapped county lines than any force in the country.
“We are really big, we’re really near to London, really near to Birmingham and we’ve got a brilliant transport network.
“As a result of that, dealing with drugs and drug dealing, we have to be good at it because of the cross-border criminality.
“We have a dedicated drugs taskforce which deals with the really high end of serious organised crime, but also the lower end when someone is found to be drug dealing in a local park.
“We are able to respond very quickly and take out those dealers which is why we had that increase in prosecution for drug trafficking.”
The amount of incidents attended decreased by 7 per cent from 172,326 to 160,127. The chief constable put this down to the force using its resources more effectively.
“In a perfect world, I would love a situation where we could send an officer to report on every crime,” he said.
“But the reality is that we need officers not just to respond to crimes, but also have the time to investigate them as well.
“Some crimes we can investigate by doing it over the phone.
“We have a back office which we’ve invested in more so that we can hopefully free officers up on the streets to have more time to be proactive and stop cars, target criminals and stop and search people on the streets.”
The past year also saw a decrease in the amount of formal actions taken by TVP officers, both in all crimes at 6.4 per cent, and with domestic crime at 18.4 per cent.
Mr Hogg said that the reason for this was that the force had moved to focus on more serious crimes.
He said: “We have charged more offenders, but as a result of that, we have moved away from actions taken.”
The large decrease in domestic actions taken was due to the force stopping issuing cautions to domestic abuse offenders.
Mr Hogg explained that the reason for this was to secure more prosecutions by focusing on the evidence during investigations.
He explained: “A third of the people we arrest in the Thames Valley is for domestic abuse, and that continues to rise.
“We are very proactive in evidence-led prosecutions, which is where we use the 999 call, the body-worn camera video and what the officer has seen and found and we use that to prosecute the offender to make it clear that domestic abuse is not accepted in our communities.”
In terms of what he wanted TVP to improve upon over the next 12 months, the chief constable had two key areas of focus.
The first is the retention of TVP staff. Recruitment for the force has been very successful in recent years, seeing an increase of 600 officers since 2020, but Mr Hogg acknowledged that it is tough to keep hold of quality people.
He said: “We are in a very expensive area of the country to live in. The pay for our police officers and staff is not what it should be in terms of their levels of responsibility.”
To try and tackle this, he has made the force’s recruitment process more rigorous - 20 per cent less candidates were offered jobs when compared to previous years - so that the right people are given right jobs at square one.
He has also increased support for current officers and more supervision for junior roles.
The second area he wants the force to focus on is to improve on its key mission statement, solving more crime.
TVP did see a 6.8 per cent overall increase in arrests in 2023/24 which Mr Hogg was “really pleased” with, but he still thinks his officers can do more.
He said: “Despite our real successes in a number of areas, I still think we can do more in solving more crime.
“I certainly want to focus on what people might call low-level crime.
“There is a victim at the end of every crime, and when I speak to members of the public they want us to arrest criminals, they want to see those positive outcomes, so I expect our officers and staff to be more proactive in solving more crime over the next year.”
