Car crime statistics are shocking in Nottinghamshire but there have been no convictions. Here in Broxtowe, the Nottinghamshire constituency that forms the first step northwards from Nottingham to Sherwood Forest, we are steeped in all things Robin Hood. It’s therefore heartening that our local police attitudes towards outlaws extend to those of the more modern ilk: the humble vehicle criminal.
It seems that if you fancy doing something illegal with, or to, a car, Broxtowe is a good place to be. Commit a car crime here and chances are good you’ll get away with it: absolutely no such crimes were solved by the police here in one neighbourhood (that swathe of former pit country, Awsworth, Cossal and Trowell) last year. Not one.
And there were many, so many in fact the only two places worse for turning car crimes into convictions was Kensington and Chelsea in second, and Blyth in Bassetlaw (arguably even more Robin Hood) taking the dubious crown.
Car crime police statistics
Now as a local journalist I’m naturally sceptical of such stats that touch upon my patch. Checking the source on the above car crime factoid however, expecting it spawned from some desperate-for-attention auto insurance company, it seems it’s from ‘The Police’, the actual police, who possibly aren’t in the habit of throwing out wild stats to grab attention. So why are we a hotspot of laissez faire when it comes to twoccing motors? Should we ask the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Notts to explain?
Car crime and Caroline Henry (PCC)
I duly go to ask her over for a coffee and a chat. When she was just humble Caroline Henry, this wasn’t out of character. Before she became Hottest of the Fuzz, I met up with her and her husband Darren (a big fan of Liz Truss) for a chat about politics in a local pub. Her spouse would go on to win Broxtowe for the Tories in 2019, and she’d follow him into power 18 months later. Surely she’d be good to come and explain why her force was so poor at policing our neighbourhoods these days? After all, her campaign had been targeted around exactly these crimes.
Wrong. Since 2022 she’s been quite touchy if the words ‘car’ and ‘crime’ are mentioned: in July of that year she pleaded guilty to five speeding offences committed over just four months, fined £2,450 and banned from driving for six months. Never usually shy of giving her opinion on issues, she refused to talk to the BBC and other media, and blocked me on social media after I wrote this.
Obviously, you’d think that she’d have done the decent thing and resigned – speeding was, according to her campaign, a priority to address. You also can guess at the next part. She stayed on, despite Inspector Simon Riley, the chair of Nottinghamshire Police Federation, admitting that his members had “lost trust and confidence […] the general feeling is that she should resign”.
Car crime – why no convictions?
Of course, this news doesn’t appear out of the ether, but is rather a local manifestation of a much wider national story, and forget such stuff as the historic slashes to the police force during the austerity years, where 20,000 police were lost nationally. While this number has been replaced since 2019, the damage has been done; as Gavin Stephens, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council explained in January this was not wiping the slate clean, as funding in other areas has been so drastically cut.
Add to this a criminal justice system that has been underfunded to the point of collapse, with the courts dealing with a record backlog, increasing delays, and a prison system that is disintegrating, morale can hardly be high among those who strive to bring criminals to justice. If you are working in a futile, broken system; if the most prominent public figure in your organisation is a shameless hypocrite you’re having to devote your own resources to ensure she keeps on the right side of the law … well, why bother? That’s perhaps unfair to your average copper, who joined for all the right reasons, but finds themselves thwarted by a government that has seemingly given up on public services.
Trowell hopes for change in election year
In 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, Trowell was chosen to be the quintessential British village: rural, but not remote; not beautiful – no village green, no stunning views, but not ugly either, a charm in its normality, its averageness, its centrality and a measured continuum. It had not sped smokily ahead with industrialisation; it had not been left behind to become a backwater. It adapted at its own pace, and thus mirrored a post-war England working out its sense of self. Confident, but not cocky.
Here in 2024, it has a new claim, one that will pull it up on Google searches: it’s the third most visible place on the map where fundamental elements of a functioning society, namely crime being tackled, receded to baldness, and car crime became effectively decriminalised. Can it be reversed? Well, our own local criminal commissioner is up for election in May, and soon after, her MP husband. Perhaps, here in this land of Robin Hood, a little bit of fairness and financial distribution may start to seep through, and outlaws become something that are celebrated retrospectively while tackled in the present.
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