EAST Cornwall has a new 'top cop' — and he is promising higher visibility policing for the smaller communities of Caradon.
Chief Inspector Rob Cooper has taken over as Caradon district commander from John Tucker, who has been promoted to Superintendent and is now operations support officer for Cornwall.
Chief Insp Cooper, 41, lives in West Devon. He is married with three children and originally hails from East Cornwall.
He has not, however, been a policeman all his life, joining Devon and Cornwall Police after seven years' sailing the world's oceans aboard Shell's fleet of oil tankers.
Chief Insp Cooper's first posting was Okehampton in 1985, where he worked for two years. He went to Plymouth, where he worked in CID and uniform and became an inspector at Ivybridge. He was also one of the Chief Constable's staff officers in Exeter before promotion to his current rank at Operations in Plymouth, then this move to Liskeard.
In Caradon, he aims to continue the good work of his predecessors in reducing burglary and 'getting to grips' with vehicle crime, which has gone up 20 per cent recently.
'Over the next two years we will be receiving six extra officers. They are going into community liaison posts to increase our visibility within the district,' he said. 'We have also obtained a mobile display unit which we will move around the district to increase our access to residents in outlying areas.'
The chief inspector is the third commander in two years, since the post was created, but he said he didn't regard the job as a 'staging post'.
'I regard it as an area I'm coming into to carry on the good work and keep it a safe place to live, work and visit. Having spent a lot of my time here growing up in the area, I'd like to put something back into it.'