OPINION: Victims of crime in Luton are being let down

Everybody has a right to feel safe in their own community, to feel like the police know and care about their area and will act if something goes wrong. Though Bedfordshire police is full of dedicated and talented officers, time and time again on the doorstep I am hearing the same thing: people feel less safe than they used to.

Across the country the statistics are stark: there are 10,000 fewer police officers on the beat compared to 2010, over 90% of crime is going unsolved and serious violence is up by 70% since 2015. Two million crimes are dropped each year without a suspect being found, and there are 2,500 reports of anti-social behaviour every day.

Bedfordshire Police continues to be farcically funded as a ‘rural’ police force, despite our large urban areas and the associated challenges in crime prevention and enforcement. This means that people are not seeing officers out in their communities and feeling less safe as a result.

I want to see our streets safer. Across the country we are fighting to increase patrols and put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the street. Neighbourhood patrols will oversee their communities, and tough new Respect Orders will clamp down on anti-social behaviour.

By putting specialist domestic abuse workers in every 999 control room and sexual violence investigation units in every force, we will halve violence against women and girls, and a ten-year Young Futures programme will prevent youth crime by offering specialist mental health support. Specialised youth workers to give teenagers the support they need to prevent knife crime and give them a better start to life, alongside introducing a specific offence for recruiting young people into gangs.

These steps are what the people of Luton and the UK deserve – communities that feel safe, where anti-social behaviour is taken seriously, and the police are not so overstretched that in so many cases, crime goes unpunished.

If you have any issues in your community that you want support with, I am here to help and listen, just email [email protected].