The operation has been deemed a  success by Wealden’s District Police Commander Chief Inspector Dick Coates. He  said “The operation was intended to reduce these high impact crimes and identify those people responsible, A number of tactics have been deployed to disrupt this activity with great success and we have seen a direct reduction in reported offences as a result”. Both uniform and plain clothes officers were deployed along with some more high tech techniques to enable us to gather information. The use of bait items which can be tracked has been used with at least one item being stolen and recovered within a short time. Enquires are ongoing to arrest the offenders who will more than likely be responsible for other thefts in the Wealden area. The use of new technology is something we continue to develop and will use all means available to us to keep safe the property of the residents of Wealden. Criminals need to bear in mind that we are using these new methods. They will never know if the items they steal can be tracked by Police. Criminals should bear this in mind and I would urge them to not steal in the first place or we may well be knocking on their door very quickly.

Over the last week in excess of 26 warranted officers and 24 Community Support Officers have been active in North Wealden.

Inspector Wakefield who leads the Neighbourhood teams said “I have deployed my officers from Hailsham, Uckfield, Polegate, Heathfield and Crowborough in order to create a show of strength. I wanted to reassure the community that we will not put up with this type of activity and that we take this crime very seriously”.

Whilst some of these days utilised technology and tactics which cant be disclosed others were more highly visible. If you happened to drive in Hartfield on Monday for example you may have interacted with one of the 9 static stop teams that were in action during the day or maybe you were stopped by one of the 10 Proactive units patrolling on Thursday between 0900hrs in the morning to 0700hrs the following day?

During the week it is estimated that approximately 150 vehicles were stopped and checked by either uniformed or plain clothed officers looking for evidence of these offence types and we have had some really great results.

Sgt  Ryan Allitt who organised the operation said “The people of Wealden have reacted really well to this initiative and have been very encouraging. We have tried to minimise disturbance to legitimate members of our community while causing  maximum disruption to the people involved in these offences”.

A major part of this operation was to expand on the intelligence currently held about people who offend in Sussex but live outside the county. Our Intelligence Unit has been liaising closely with their counter parts in Kent and Surry and we have filled some significant wholes in the intelligence picture. As a result of this operation we identified information about who is potentially offending in Wealden, who they are associating with and which vehicles they are using to commit these offences.

On Friday evening, the final day of the Operation, teams from Sgt Allitt’s initiative were involved in the arrest of 3 males believed to be involved in the theft of Metal. A quantity of metal was recovered and enquires are on-going.  

The Wealden Operations Team, lead by PS Allitt, can be followed on Twitter (WealdenPol #Wealdenops) and will be continuing to target those that target our communities.

Your local Neighbourhood Policing Team