Schools 'honeypots' for thieves – police
SCHOOLS are being given a "tailor-made" service by the police, according to the senior community officer.
Chief Insp Peter Buckley said low levels of security on many school sites and large amounts of new and expensive technology meant schools are becoming one of the biggest targets for opportunistic criminals.
He said: "They are honeypots as far as some offenders are concerned and items such as TV screens and projector screens seem to be what they are going for."
Speaking to the Chronicle & Echo as part of our campaign to Protect Our Schools, Chief Insp Glover said the police were working with the local education authority, individual schools and crime and disorder partnerships to try to tackle the rising problem of criminals targeting schools for easy gains.
And he said the police did not plan to take a county-wide approach to the problem as the circumstances of each school were unique.
He added: "We don't have a "one size fits all" approach to crimes committed against schools, because it doesn't work.
"The way we work is to try to tailor approaches which fit the needs of individual schools.
"All schools are different and as far as we are concerned the local teams know the schools on their area and are often able to deal with local problems effectively. If necessary we can scale up our approach to a problem. If a problem extends over a wider area the larger our response."
Chief Insp Glover added that although there was no specific strategy in relation to schools, a lot of work went into both crime prevention and detection at schools across Northamptonshire.
He said: "When there is a break in at a school, several things happen at the same time. Scenes of crime officers are deployed to gather evidence, crime prevention advisors visit the schools to offer them advice on security measures, analysts look at patterns of criminality and the local crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which have education representatives on their committees, also look into what can be done locally."
n The Chronicle & Echo's new campaign, Protect Our Schools, aims to encourage residents to come forward with information on school break-ins, to appeal to the police and other authorities to make the problem a priority and to highlight new ways of tackling the problem.
Schools with an ongoing problem with vandalism and break-ins can call Protect Our Schools campaign reporter Melissa Lee on Northampton 467036 or email her on melissa.lee@northants news.co.uk
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Friday 10 February 2012
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