This comes as a particular source of frustration for councillors and residents in light of the Government’s Operation Uplift, which started in April 2020, and has a national ambition of recruiting a 20,00 additional police officers nationwide in three years.
Police and crime commissioner Alison Hernandez has said that Devon and Cornwall Police are on target to recruit an additional 423 officers by April 2023. The number is expected to rise to 279 by April, and to the expected total of 423 twelve months later, which will bring the total number of officers to 3,610 across the constabulary. One hundred and ten officers are currently being trained over the next 12 months.
In the Gunnislake ward three weekends ago, 10 cars were vandalised and had number plates stolen which were then illegally advertised on social media.
Despite such incidents and the increase in police numbers, police continue to have a sparse presence in the parish, says councillors. Police reports are not listed on the council website as councillors have stated that they struggle to ever get responses to their enquiries.
Cllr Jim Wakem has described the parish as ’self-policing’ and remarked that ‘for one of the biggest parishes in the county, the police presence is terrible. We play a game called spot the copper.’
Inspector Dan Harvey who covers the Callington neighbourhood policing team said: ‘Our police presence is not always in overt cars and uniformed officers. We have a number of resources that are unmarked or low visibility.
‘We have several unmarked vehicles and covert capabilities. The fact we aren’t always seen indicates the Calstock parish is a low crime area.’