Officers patrolling the streets, arrests being made, people charged – these are the tactics people know about when it comes to policing.
But often, it’s a cycle of the same offenders or local communities suffering, particularly when it comes to drug use and associated crime like theft, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and violent crime which comes hand in hand with drug use. Officers responsible for policing Lincoln city centre recognised that relying only on traditional tactics wasn’t solving the problem – so we came up with a plan that would.
This is where Operation Argentina was born. Launched in 2018, it is our dedicated city centre team. We created a team made up of response officers – those who are deployed to emerging incidents – who also carry out the longer-term work of Neighbourhood Policing Teams. This cross-over enables us to use a proactive patrolling approach alongside partnership work to prevent drug issues and the associated crimes from escalating.
When the initiative was established, multiple reports were…
