Police unveil new cyber crime team in North Yorkshire as part of ten year strategy

Dave Jones hopes to open the new unit, staffed by four officers, by the end of the year as part of his ten-year strategy announced yesterday, which will see a radical overhaul of the way North Yorkshire Police operates.

It will see £10 million drawn from the force’s reserves for a one-off investment in new technology, including £3.5 million on giving officers mobile devices allowing them to complete paperwork and access police systems without returning to a station.

The new devices may in future allow police to check thumb-prints and car licence plate details, though the force is also spending £1 million on improvements to its Automatic Number Plate Recognition facilities to combat travelling gangs coming into the county from elsewhere.

North Yorkshire Police is losing millions of pounds a year in central Government funding and Mr Jones expects further cuts from 2016 due to a shrinking public sector, regardless of who wins next year’s election.

He and police and crime commissioner Julia Mulligan today committed to maintaining the current workforce of 1,392 police officers and 183 Police Community Support Officers.

But the plans will see the closure of two of North Yorkshire’s six police custody suites for officers to take suspects after arrest, meaning people detained in the Skipton and Selby areas are taken to other parts of the county.

The new ‘operational policing model’ was put together over eight months and will see ‘investigation hubs’ at York, Harrogate, Scarborough and the planned Northern Base near Thirsk, to speed up the delivery of justice.

Mr Jones said the cyber crime unit would work alongside the National Crime Agency’s service dealing with high-end counter-terrorism as well as the regional police e-Crime unit.

He said: “It is very simple for me. There is a part of the world we need to police. It is a bit like walking down the highway, just now it is the internet superhighway. I need police officers down that high street, and currently I don’t have the capacity to do that.”

Mrs Mulligan said: “People are concerned for example about having custody in proximity to where they live but arguably the threat comes from people who come into their homes after 8pm on the internet, and it is really important we develop capabilities around that.”

Mike Stubbs of the North Yorkshire Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said his force had “significant concerns” about the closure of custody suites in Selby and Skipton, as this would mean officers travelling long distances after arrest.