New Hampshire police chief constable promises to ‘take the fight to criminals’ with more police on the streets

New Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary chief constable Scott Chilton started off as a PC before making his way up through the ranks to the highest post in the force. This was after having worked across most, if not all, geographic and officer areas in the force in his 28 years - ensuring he is ‘well connected’ and ‘passionate’ about serving the varied communities across the area.

The new leader, who takes over from Olivia Pinkney, said he was ‘proud’ to be appointed to the position. During the last three years he had been working for Dorset Police where he was most recently chief constable.

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Speaking of his priorities for the new role, he said: ‘It’s really important we do what the public expect of policing and I think that’s been quite a challenge. It’s really important that people see police officers, see them in their neighbourhood, they see us tackling crime and investigating it when it is reported to us, and people feel safe and have a police that is trusted and is out there taking the fight to the criminals.’

Asked if there will be more police on the streets, the chief constable said: ‘Absolutely. In the next three years the force will have 650 new officers coming in. It’s about making sure they are out there on the front line, in the neighbourhoods, tackling crime, developing intelligence and making people feel safe. It’s about reducing the bureaucracy and freeing them up to do what the public expect us to do.’

Questioned whether the increasing number of officers would help to reduce crime, the chief said it would before adding: ‘You reduce crime by doing two things. These are to target offenders and to stop it happening in the first place.

‘The police have a role in that but so do lots of other public sector and voluntary agencies. So what we need to do is make sure young people don’t get involved in crime. But when crime does happen we take a robust approach to it.’

He said ‘society has become more complex but the public should rightfully expect to see more police officers’. ‘The additional officers that come in will be put on the front-line so I would expect to see a difference,’ he continued.

‘We can’t be everywhere, we can’t tackle every situation straight away and there are times where the demand on policing - which does not involve crime - we will have to deal with. But with the new officers coming in I would hope we will have a real neighbourhood and community focus.’

Last year the force declared it would attend every report of burglary, with Mr Chilton stating this would continue to be the case. ‘Burglary is a really serious crime. It is a relatively low volume crime but when it happens it is really worrying for people so (victims) will see a police officer (after a burglary),’ he said.

He also said police get ‘lots of reports’ of domestic abuse with the force to continue its efforts to tackle this along with other agencies. Anti-social behaviour also ‘needs to be addressed through community based policing’.

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