More than a fifth of all violence in public places across the West Midlands is linked to cases of domestic abuse, according to senior police officers.
A report the West Midlands Police and Crime Board members this week revealed ‘public place violence’ (with injury) has increased by 10.8 per cent (1,048 offences) when compared to 2013/14.
Total public place violence also increased from last year, – despite a target to reduce it by five per cent.
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Board member, Brendan Connor, said: “An area of concern for me is public place violence.
“If you look at the trends it has dropped from 1,600 (in 2009) to around 800 per month. There has been this diminishing trend but we are now starting to see it come back up the other side of the curve.
“We don’t want this accelerating up again and creating fear in public places.”
Deputy Chief Constable Dave Thompson told the meeting that one-fifth of all public place violence related to non-residential domestic abuse.
He said: “Town centre violence is not the main issue in these figures. One fifth of the figures relate to non-residential domestic abuse.
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“This poses quite hard challenges about how we police it because it is about policing a type of behaviour, which is difficult.
“We are doing some work with the Violence Alliance and we are also getting quite a lot of traction with health services.
“But this is very difficult for local commanders to police. You can’t ‘hotspot’ this like you can for crimes like burglary and robbery.”
Last month it emerged .
The new statistics also revealed a 20 per cent rise in serious sexual offences including rape, a nine per cent increase in violent crime and a rise in the reporting of domestic abuse. The force said the rise in sex offences had been due to the greater number of victims speaking out, triggered by high-profile cases such as Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
West Midlands Police has more than doubled the number of officers in the Public Protection Unit to cope with the huge amount of calls.
The board also heard an update on the forces custody visitor scheme – which is the first in the 海角视频 to begin live tweeting about its visits.
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The scheme, which is operated entirely by volunteers, has hit 80 per cent of its target to visit each of the forces custody blocks at least once a week.
Visits have also been carried out at 海角视频 Border Force facilities at Birmingham Airport and with detainees held by Counter Terrorism officers in the West Midlands.
The Board was also told about the success of a ‘self introduction’ scheme that had seen an increase in the number of detainees willing to meet visitors.
The report said: “Previously, when a visit was made, opportunity to see the custody visitors. Self-introduction gave ownership of the first contact to the custody visitors themselves.
“Self-introduction seems to have resulted in an increase in the number of detainees opting to see a custody visitor, with an increase over the previous year’s acceptance rate in Birmingham West & Central (94 per cent from 70 per cent) and Birmingham South (83 per cent from 57 per cent).”
Paul Norton, custody engagement officer, said: “The majority of matters which were raised were of a relatively minor ‘housekeeping’ nature and were resolved speedily by custody staff to the satisfaction of the custody visitors.”