Superintendent Andy Martin, Suffolk Constabulary Southern Area Commander discusses with PolicingTV publisher Bernard Rix some of the crime challenges and what works in policing his area.

“As the Southern Area Commander, I’m responsible for what people might refer to as Uniformed Operations for the Southern Area. It goes a little bit beyond that – so that day to day we work with colleagues who aren’t in uniform. But my main job is to make sure that Southern Area runs on a day to day basis. And that’s for every crime type and every type of offence”. 

“Here in Ipswich in particular, I think we’ve excelled at some of our management around gang criminality, and serious youth violence. It’s something that re-emerged for us over Covid, escalated quite quickly. And we’ve used a lot of innovative ways to manage the gang crime that we’re seeing”. 

“Historically, we’ve been quite reactive – but we’re on the front foot now… [resulting in] a steady decline in gang crime over the last year”. 

“We’ve really pushed the prevention piece. With that, we’ve heavily leant on our partners, who are involved in that early intervention, with young people in particular. And by getting them in at an early stage, we’re able to tackle the cause rather than symptoms”.