Fare Cop on West Midlands buses
A special Taskforce to combat crime across the West Midlands bus network has succeeded in halving the number of offences in just three years, latest figures have revealed.
The Safer Travel Partnership has been busy using the Home Office SARA model and four weekly tactical assessments to depoly targeted patrols, random on-board passenger checks and undercover surveillance.
At the same time, the Partnership has imported the key framework from CDRPs and has just commissioned its first annual strategic assessment of the West Midlands bus, tram and train network-the first time this approach has been used outside of London.
This co-ordinated action, backed up by a comprehensive network of more than 1,000 CCTV cameras across the public transport network, is proving highly successful.
During 2007/8 the Partnership acheived a 33 per cent drop in all crime on the bus network and this figure was reduced by a further 14 per cent during 2008/9. Figures for the current financial year show that the Partnership is on target to have acheived a cut of more than 50 per cent over the last three years.
With more than 900,000 bus journeys being made every day in the West Midlands it means that, excluding vandalism, there is only one crime in every 126,000 bus rides.
Launched five years ago, Safer Travel is a partnership between regional transport authority Centro, West Midlands Police, bus operator National Express West Midlands, the British Transport Police, the Safer Birmingam Partnership andd the regions six other CDRPs.
The partnership was origianlly set up to make bus travel even safer for passengers by deterring crime and anti-social behaviour on and around the network. More recently it has expanded its operations to include the Midland Metro tram system and the local rail network.
Made up of more than 40 police officers and police community support officers, the Safer Travel Team also goes into schools to teach children the importance of good behaviour on public transport and how to act safely.
Mark Babington, Crime Reduction Manager at Centro, said: "Although the chance of becoming a victim of crime whilst using the bus network is extremely low, we know from talking to passengers that what can be of real concern is the nuisance behaviour of other people on board-things like playing loud music and smoking.
"That's why we launched our See Something Say Something campaign 18 months ago to give passengers the chance to play their part in helping to stamp out this sort of annoying behaviour.
"To date more than 1,700 people have used the interactive website, text messaging and phone line service to anonymously log details of incidents
"The information they have given us has helped us focus our operations against hot spots of anti-social behaviour which, while not a criminal offence, can often lead to an unwarranted fear of crime and reluctance to use public transport."
Mark Babington
Centro-Crime Reduction Manager
