THE NEW community policing lead in West Devon takes his role so seriously that he is frequently seen on foot patrol in Tavistock and Okehampton.
Inspector Daniel Jones is proud of leading from the front and even helped arrest a suspected drug offender at their Tavistock address while executing a warrant with one of his constables last week.
Daniel oversees the neighbourhood police teams in the two towns and surrounding villages and keen to improve community visibility of his teams – because that is what residents want and because it acts as a crime deterrent.
Daniel Jones joined Devon and Cornwall Police as a constable in 2014 and went on to serve as a sergeant before promotion to inspector. He also worked on critical incident management and a project to improve the quality of police investigations.
He said: “It’s not the routine role of an inspector to be out pounding the beat or attend arrests, but I strongly believe in leading from the front and demonstrating my willingness to actively be involved in anything I ask of my teams.
“I have set them targets to be highly visible in the community and so, I went out with one of my officers and was needed to enact an arrest. The public are always saying they want to see bobbies in uniform on the beat and I understand why. This is a statement that we are taking the community seriously and I know it is a reassurance to see us out there regularly. If we become familiar faces, then people will be be more likely to chat to use about issues of concern and give us information we can act on. Community intelligence is the lifeblood of effective crime fighting and is therefore, more likely to be dealing with residents’ priorities.”
The policing priorities are road safety, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and drugs, all tackled in partnership with local authorities and other organisations.
Daniel, a keen runner, youth football coach, maths graduate and one-time global traveller, said small-scale anti-social behaviour could easily escalate into criminal behaviour if police were not on top of their neighbourhood intelligence: “We are at the front line as far as community safeguarding goes.
“We must take residents’ issues seriously because the simple so-called ‘game’ of knocking on doors and running away can lead to retaliation if the victim reacts. This can easily lead to threats of violence from the culprit and even physical harm.
“I want to reassure people we do have the tools under anti-social behaviour legislation to deal with this sort of behaviour and they shouldn’t be afraid to tell us, they won’t be wasting our time.”
