Interview new Fareham & Gosport Police Commander, Marcus Kennedy at Fareham
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00:00No problem, so my name is Marcus Kennedy, I'm the Chief Inspector for Fairmont Golf
00:05Sport, which basically means I'm the District Commander across those two areas.
00:08And when did you take over the role?
00:11Around the 19th of September I landed, I was meant to come in probably about November to
00:15take over from my predecessor, but as things are in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, things
00:20move very quickly, so I got a phone call from my boss saying, can you come across a bit
00:23sooner, so yes I landed around the 19th of September.
00:27What sort of areas do you want to tackle?
00:30So predominantly before, I was in Stamton for the last couple of years in the same similar
00:36role, and there I was quite clear, and I'm probably quite clear here, is I've got a low
00:41tolerance level for anybody that makes people's lives a misery, so what I really want to do
00:45is target that serious end of violence, crime, in both areas, but also conversely I want
00:51to target the little things that can really make people's lives difficult, so anti-social
00:55behaviour as well, so both ends of the spectrum really, but I want to make sure we get and
00:59deal with serious crime robustly, which has been a couple of cases I've landed that we've
01:03been dealing with really, really well, and then get to understand with the communities
01:07of Fairham and Gosport what really upsets people, what people, is concerning people,
01:12and work out through partnership how we can tackle that as well.
01:14I think all crime for Fairham and Gosport is down by about 4 or 5% year on year, and
01:20it all depends on what crime you want to choose doesn't it, so if you talk about shoplifting,
01:24nationally shoplifting and acquistive crime has been going up and up and up, I led on
01:29a team being brought into the city centre in Stampton to target that specific issue,
01:34and I know my teams here have those challenges in some of the high streets, targeting those
01:38prolific shoplifters, making sure they're held accountable, and where needs get in custodial
01:43sentences to reduce it, because we know traditionally acquistive crime and shoplifting wasn't always
01:48a priority for policing going back a couple of years, but it is one of our priorities now,
01:51so things like that, shoplifting we've seen rise generally, and you do sometimes see a
01:55rise in that when you've got austerity and cost of living crisis is going up, but predominantly
02:01crime across Fairham and Gosport is going down, but what I want to do is make sure we
02:05don't get those spikes, so when you do get a spike in a certain crime type, so sometimes
02:09theft, we get some shops targeted for vape thefts etc, or you might get a spate of burglaries,
02:16it's knowing straight away, right we've got a pattern, and what do we do behind it, do
02:20we put officers behind that, do we put covert units, do I get my covert traffic units in,
02:27do we put CID in the area, do we do that clear hold bill strategy of flooding it with officers,
02:31so every day in the morning in my district I chair a meeting where we looked at the previous
02:38crimes for the last 24 hours, all crime, so we look through it and that's where we spot
02:42trends, have we had dwelling burglaries, have we had a commercial break, have I got any
02:47patterns of sexual offences going on out there, violence against women and girls, that's one
02:53of my priorities as well, so just to give some reassurance to people, we do that every
02:57day, tracking those crimes to see actually have we got a pattern, and that's how we pick
03:01up trends and that's how we focus our resources.
03:03What's your plan?
03:04I would suggest, I don't know if it's a problem, but the problem is unreported crime, if we
03:09don't know about it we can't help, so yeah I would always say to people please go to
03:14online, if it's not urgent go to the online Hampshire and Isle of Wight Corsovie page,
03:19report it there, if it's not urgent that's a really good piece, it might just be intelligence,
03:23you might be just telling us something you've seen, you don't think it's a crime, but we
03:27recently did a warrant in the Fairham area where there was information intelligence came
03:32in from the public that there were drugs being smoked in the garden of one area and then
03:36juveniles were attending a certain property and we were worried about was drugs being
03:40dealt at that address, did a warrant, made an arrest, shut that location down, that wasn't
03:45our information intelligence, that was the public telling us, so I would always say please
03:49tell us if you're worried about something, you think something, tell us on the online
03:53system or 101, obviously an emergency ring 999.
03:58The fundamental principles of British policing is we police by cooperation and the public
04:04are armed, we are the public, that's why British policing is really unique, we desperately
04:08need the public to tell us what's going on in their communities, because if we don't
04:11know we can't react, so I'd always encourage everyone to report as much as they can.