Police to push for more officers as force faces ‘exceptionally busy weekend’
The new sergeants at Ilford police station - Credit: Archant
Police called for reinforcements from other boroughs on Friday as they were faced with an “exceptionally busy” period.
Now a senior officer says Redbridge police will be pushing for more officers to be brought in permanently to cope with the borough’s increasing population and changing demographic.
Det Ch Insp Neil Lemon said: “We are quite a busy borough. We can be as busy as Hackney some weeks. We don’t necessarily have a lot of stabbings or a lot of gang problems – that we don’t have – but we are a busy borough.”
He added: “We’re doing well for resources and for the first time we are almost up to target. We are a few short. There are systems in place. When we get too busy they do draw on resources from the adjoining boroughs, which they did on Friday.”
Earlier this month, Redbridge unveiled 11 new sergeants who had been recruited to the borough – eight uniformed and three to work in CID.
Arrests
And last year, Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced in the GLA’s police and crime plan that Redbridge would gain 86 new police officers by next year.
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This week Redbridge police were unable to confirm the exact number of calls from Friday and through the weekend.
But on Monday, the force tweeted from its account @MPSRedbridge to say it had made a “number of good arrests” over the “exceptionally busy” weekend.
Arrests had been made on suspicion of rape, drugs offences, criminal damage, drunkenness, and witness intimidation. The tweets said two people had also been arrested on suspicion of assault, two on suspicion of domestic assault, two on suspicion of theft from a vehicle and two on suspicion of aggravated vehicle taking.
