FOCUSING on ‘people, not targets’ will be the remit of Swindon police with new commander for the northern hub Supt Charlie Armstrong.

Replacing Supt Andrew Carr, who has become head of crime prevention, Supt Armstrong will bring a background in professional standards and contact management to the role, and insists she works for the troops rather than the other way around.

“We are going to focus on those offenders who pose the most threat and risk of harm,” she said. “We already know who these people are, so we are going to target our activity towards them to reduce the vulnerability of the people surrounding them. That means we will not be chasing detection rates.

“My focus is on people, not targets, so we are looking at what the issues are for the people I work for, the officers, and what are the issues for the people we look after, the public.

“The priority for us has to be the vulnerable people who are being exploited, either through being a sex worker, being dependent on drugs, or being used or coerced by criminals.

We will focus on reducing the risk around missing people and those vulnerable and at risk of sexual exploitation.

“We are 1,000 times better than we used to be. Back in 1992 we didn’t have the ability to look into crimes like child abuse in the same way we are today.

“With places like the multi-agency safeguarding hub, where we have got the right people to assess the need of a teenage girl, interventions can happen much sooner than they did 10 or 20 years ago.

“They are not just the written-off generation. I don’t know of any addict who wants to be on drugs, and with many people its not about being bad or deliberately unlawful, they are not making the best decisions about their safety and well-being.

“We are seeing a rise in crime rates because we didn’t use to crime everything. Now we log and crime everything, because we are equipped to deal with it and links with partner agencies are much better.

“Those agencies will help but by logging everything we get a true picture of the issues we really care about and how we treat people.”

From 2010, Supt Armstrong worked in contact management as a chief inspector before a sojourn as Outer Zone Bronze commander at the 2012 Olympics in Weymouth.

She then moved into people services and professional standards, helping firm up the values and behaviour for Wiltshire Police.

“It is important people here are doing the job for the right reasons,” she said.

“There was one officer who treated the job as a dating agency and felt vulnerable people were easy game.

“Thankfully those sorts of people are very rare, and will not be tolerated.

“We also need to take the arrogance out of police leadership and decision making. We are public servants, and if you remember that it keeps you humble. Out of that you listen, and you care.”

Plans are in motion to revamp Gablecross police station as an open plan office, in a move which is hoped would cut out ‘silos’ of teams and join up working practices.

“Being part of what is happening on a daily basis is much better than sitting in an office,” added Supt Armstrong.

“Every time a problem emerges we used to create a little team to solve it, but that doesn’t work. If you have got an open plan set-up, where your assets can be controlled and tasked, you can give a better service to the public.

“We have to put the public need first.”