SERGEANT Peter Crowe, the new police officer in charge of operations in Bolton town centre and Halliwell, talks to our reporter Seamus McDonnell about the key issues he will target to improve the area.

Benefitting from the experience of an 11-year career in policing, he feels that a focus on dealing with the root causes of drug problems will have a knock-on effect on other town centre problems, such as anti-social behaviour and homelessness.

Sgt Crowe, who took up his role on April 1, also called for a “back-to-basics” approach, involving working alongside organisations like Bolton Council and the NHS.

He started by explaining his philosophy, saying: “I would say that my focus is going to be on identifying the factors which are negatively effecting quality of life.

“My main concern is the people who are making money out of dealing drugs.

“These people who are involved in criminal acts are connected to other organised crime, and criminality.

“I think dealing with the drugs issue will assist with the begging issue in the town centre, will help with the substance abusers, help us identify and help vulnerable people, and support those contacting police with issues like anti-social behaviour, drugs and other criminality.

“I also worry that our response to things we are told by the community has been inconsistent in the past.”

Sgt Crowe went on to speak about the problem of homelessness, an issue which has been flagged on numerous occasions recently, with both Bolton Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority working to combat both homelessness rough sleeping.

Adding: “The perception is that homelessness is worse than it actually is. I think we need to inform the public of what it is we are doing and the efforts we go to with housing and the NHS outreach teams. There’s a whole raft of people working countless hours to resolve these issues.”

Council bosses have suggested this week that a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) could be the preferred method of banning certain anti-social behavioural issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, and beggars who the public find threatening.

Sgt Crowe says he would support such an initiative, although he pointed out that enforcement could pose problems for the police.

He said: “I like the idea of a PSPO, a reservation of mine would be enforcement – from our point of view – but I think giving the council the tools to do some enforcement can only be a good thing.”

He added: “I meet with the council very regularly, we have got a very clear working relationship. They are demanding, because they need support, but for everything they ask of us they will support us as well. It’s a very positive relationship for us both.”

Greater Manchester Police has suffered a drop in officer numbers in recent years, but Sgt Crowe says the lack of resources has made the police think differently.

Adding: “We have effectively gone back to basics from a policing perspective, we have to act in another way, we used to throw officers at a problem but these days we have to do things in a different way.

"We used to have more specific roles and now we are over-stretched in some areas and have to think about the way we deal with things.

“We can’t do it by ourselves, even in the past it wasn’t necessarily the right way to do it.

"These days, we have acknowledged that we are not the all-knowing power, we work with the health services and the council better than we did. These are wells of knowledge that we never tapped into but now we are.”

Ultimately, he says, law enforcement comes down to the same principles, regardless of the central issue.

He said: “It’s all the same, you look at the victim, the offender and the location, if you can remove one of these you can help deal with issues. We need to figure out which of these three needs to be removed in a given circumstance.

“I want the public to be aware of what the police are doing. We want people to be aware that even though we might close some crimes, we are always looking at the wider picture, we can’t always shout about it but we are looking at things and we are aware of the issues.

“I would urge people to call us with anything that’s effecting their quality of life, we will review these things and, even if it is not us that resolves the issues, we will do as much as we can.”