CRIME in Melksham is on a downward trend, despite a shortage of police officers says the local police.
“Melksham is a low crime area,” said Inspector Andrew Lemon at the Melksham Area Board meeting last month. “We’ve seen quite a marked decrease in burglary offences; crime is on a downward trend.”
Inspector Lemon said that there was a shortage of police officers, but hoped things would improve before the end of the year.
“You are served by a very small team and we are looking to get additional resources in place, with a view to increasing police numbers and representation in the town,” he said.
“We have a very, very young workforce out there on the front line. 60% of your police officers have less than three years’ service.
“It’s a real challenge at the moment, the resourcing side of it. Trowbridge does all your response policing for Bradford, Melksham and all your outlying villages. Those teams are stretched, they are under resourced, but they are doing the best they can. We’re carrying a lot of vacancies.
“We have been promised additional resources, extra police officers which we should start seeing before the end of the year.”
Inspector Lemon said a community policing team had attended the Melksham Food & River Festival in Melksham in September and had seen ‘lots of positive community engagement’.
“Local residents were able to have conversations with officers about local issues,” he said. “The main issues that came out of that were boy racers and the congregation of youths, which links to anti-social behaviour.
“There was nothing mentioned about drugs strangely, which is quite unusual.
“We’ll take those conversations away and put together some enforcement plans to deal with those issues.”
Pictured: The community policing team at Melksham Food & River Festival.
