Increased patrols and investigative work see robberies reduced
West Midlands Police says personal robberies are down nearly 15%
Personal robberies have gone down by almost 15% compared to the same time last year as West Midlands Police increased patrols around current and seasonal robbery hotspots before and after Christmas.
Officers also went after suspected offenders still at large and worked through live investigations to identify further suspects. As a result, outstanding suspects have reduced while open robbery investigations have gone down from 880 in October to 793 at the end of January.
Work leading up to the festive period and beyond was the latest phase of Op Ruby, the force-wide programme to reduce robberies throughout the West Midlands. In the last year they've made a concerted effort to improve how they record stolen property, increase the number of related searches they conduct and record, up their patrols and intensify their crime prevention messaging.
Neighbourhood patrols around known robbery hotspots throughout December and January were bolstered by officers from the Project Guardian Taskforce, which is dedicated to tackling offences such as robbery, knife crime and public place violence within local communities.
Despite competing operational demands during the two-month period, officers from their local policing areas carried out 93% of their scheduled targeted patrols, equating to 4,288 officer hours. Over the same timeframe, the Project Guardian Taskforce provided additional patrols within the identified hotspots totaling 3,695 officer hours.
Op Ruby Silver lead, Detective Chief Inspector Gagy Bedi, said:
“I’d like to thank officers for their hard work over the festive season. This was a coordinated and collective effort involving our LPA robbery leads, neighbourhood teams, investigative units and our Project Guardian taskforce.
“We’ve been intensifying our efforts through Op Ruby to bring down robbery offences across the region via a combination of visible patrols in the right places at the right times, tightening up our investigative processes, promoting good practice among colleagues and distilling crime prevention messaging among our communities.
“Our stats continue to show that our hard work is paying off, and it’s our responsibility to ensure the downward trajectory of these awful crimes continues.”
Inspector Colin Gallier, Op Ruby Force Coordinator and Project Guardian Taskforce Lead, added:
"Robbery causes a huge deal of distress to its victims, often leaving them frightened and feeling vulnerable. It can be committed by people carrying weapons and like other priority offences such as knife crime and youth violence, was the reason that Project Guardian was set up.
"We have been making real progress in tackling robberies since Op Ruby has been up and running and we'll continue to work on new strategies and actions for dealing with these offences moving forward."
In addition to the operational activity, the force also ran a month-long campaign from Boxing Day onwards on the messaging service Snapchat, targeting school and college age children and young people with advice and tips around securing their mobile phones in the post-Christmas period.
The campaign attracted a great deal of attention, garnering over seven million views and delivering more than 36,000 click throughs to further advice.