Crime in Crawley has fallen over the past year but cases of stalking and harassment have increased, a council scrutiny committee has been told.
During a meeting on Monday (November 2), Chief Inspector Shane Baker, of Sussex Police, presented crime figures for the town, including burglary, domestic abuse and the use of weapons.
Unsurprisingly, given the time spent in lockdown, overall crime dropped by more than five per cent between October 1 2019 and September 30 2020, with burglary down by 11 per cent.
There were 417 burglaries in the town during that period, compared to 469 in 2018/19 and 10,606 crimes overall compared to 11,233 in 2018/19.
But stalking and harassment rose by 8.7 per cent, from 987 cases in 2018/19 to 1,073 cases in 2019/20.
Both the police and the council are part of the Safer Crawley Partnership alongside the county council, fire service, probation service and health service.
Its role is to reduce crime and disorder.
Paula Doherty, the council’s community services manager, told the meeting that the partnership had a number of stalking ‘champions’ who were trained to take the lead in dealing with such incidents.
She said:
“What we know about stalking is that it’s pervasive in its nature and it often holds more risks for those individuals who experience stalking.”
When it came to weapons, the number of people caught carrying one fell by more than 13 per cent, from 207 in 2018/19 to 179 in 2019/20.
Conversely, the number of crimes in which people claimed to have a weapon rose by almost 10 per cent, from 316 to 346 incidents.
CI Baker said:
“This tells me in essence that the threat of using a weapon may have risen, however the actual physical possession of these weapons is in decline.”
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