SOUTH Worcestershire Superintendent Damian Pettit has had a challenging first year in his new role but said he is “proud of our communities” and his staff in how they’ve coped with several high-profile incidents.

Born and bred in this part of the county, the 40-year-old commander has policed in all five areas of West Mercia, including headquarters, and has led numerous national projects.

EDL rallies, an acid attack on a three-year-old and the body of a missing student found in the River Severn have been just some of the cases to test Superintendent Pettit’s resolve locally after he took over from Kevin Purcell who was promoted to Chief Superintendent for Shropshire and Telford, last May.

“What always strikes me is the cruelty of some people in some of the worst cases I’ve dealt with but also the humanity that arises from the people that wrap around to support victims of crime,” he said.

“That gives a really good sense of your own values and your sense of direction.”

Supt Pettit studied at Royal Grammar School Worcester then rose through the ranks of the police force over a 20-year career, and immediately prior to his current role was a chief inspector.

Now he finds himself overseeing all policing in the southern section of the county, from patrols to serious investigations to setting budgets and chairing partnership groups.

“I would describe myself as a rescuer,” he said. “I like to be involved in people’s lives for the better. So, I will go out of my way – and ask my team to go out of their way – to do everything we can to make people’s lives just a little bit better.

“Sometimes, that isn’t always possible, because we are not welcome in that dynamic and that’s a really difficult thing in policing. But that doesn’t stop us persevering, it doesn’t stop me persevering.”

He said an example could be someone who is the victim of domestic abuse and they are “not ready to recognise they are being abused or free themselves”.

He added: “But through our persistence and through our partnership working, there will be an opportunity at some point, and we will be waiting to support them.”

He said a large part of his job is working with key stakeholders in the Worcester area, including children and adult social care and probation, as well as several voluntary sectors and charities.

“Why do I work with them? One, because it’s really effective and efficient but we all share the same outcome and that’s to make people safer and protect people from harm,” he said.

And working efficiently and effectively has been a key trend since he joined the police force in 1998 due to reducing resources – but he says policing has also become more intricate.

He admits there are less command structures now which have been stripped back “through change and austerity” but “year on year we have reducing crime and that’s because we work very strongly with community partnerships”.

“But a reduction isn’t always bad, a reduction sometimes just frees up creativity, thinking autonomy, and that’s certainly what I’ve found with the team here.

“We’re a small command team but actually decisions are dynamic and implemented quickly, so there are benefits to it as well.”

He said: “The overall numbers of police officers haven’t hugely changed over the years.

“They sometimes increase, sometimes decrease. What has changed is the complexity of vulnerability” – including “invisible criminality”.

“When I joined the service, mobile phones were not that advanced and the social media platforms hadn’t really come about, so social media, the ability to commit offences in a heartbeat, be that indecent images of children, sexual grooming, sexting or fraud or threats to harm.

“It could be threats to kill, it’s taking seconds to write that and press send. It may take officers considerably more time to go and investigate that and bring people to justice – if that’s the root we need to take.”

On taking the role, Supt Pettit was keen to emphasise as best he could the link between police and the community in a “two-way interaction”.

He said: “We can’t always be around the corner, but we do have visibility.

“On any given day we assess where we need to put our resources, it changes hourly, what was a priority might have another priority in front of it because another job has come in.

“There’s a huge amount of diligence but it’s challenging for our staff, it really is – the radios never stop with incidents coming in.

“We are constantly prioritising and sometimes our priority won’t be what the public thinks our priority is or should be.”

“Of course, we always assess what we do and we go back and make contact with the individuals who have complained to us or made a report of a crime to us. It doesn’t always need an officer to go out.”

He said incidents that will always be prioritised will invariably involve “the people who are most at risk of harm”.

“Maybe domestic abuse and maybe children who are witnessing domestic abuse, maybe someone seriously assaulted, or maybe people that are so vulnerable in community that we have to focus on them to make sure they don’t come to harm.”

But, while people may sometimes feel ignored that is not the case and Supt Pettit said as an “intelligence-led organisation” they need the public to tell them as much as they can.

“The assumption is we can see everything and hear everything that goes on. We will see and hear an awful lot, I wouldn’t want the public to think we’re not looking and seeing, we do, but we can always use more.

“I would always urge the community to come forward and tell us what’s in their neighbourhood or their locality because it’s important, it’s a two-way thing policing, we police by consent.”

He said safer neighbourhood teams – which were introduced around the time he started in the police – are an important strategy for being “more engaged with our communities”.

They try to best understand the people in their areas and delve into ongoing issues that need a more strategic approach.

“Some people don’t welcome that and they can be put off by the uniform and all the utilities they have around their waist, but we are just people doing a professional job as professionally as the public would expect us to.”

Supt Pettit said: “I keep talking about a two-way process – I don’t operate a command where we dictate how policing’s done.

“I try and offer a command where we understand what a community needs, what specific witnesses and victims need from us and we will agree an emotional contract about how we best achieve that together.”