Reporter's police ridealong in Gwent's 'busiest' crime sector

POLICE dramas on television are perhaps not the best way to judge the work that officers across the country are doing.

It is all high speed chases – both in cars and on foot – or it is drug raids and foiling the plans of villains at the last minute.

But during my ride-along with the Gwent force it wasn't quite like that, although one of the events above did occur.

Gwent Police is one of the four Welsh forces. It covers Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire, Newport and Torfaen.

My destination was Cwmbran Police Station, where I would be meeting up with officers preparing to take to the streets in the name of protecting the public.

“Torfaen is the busiest sector in the whole force. We’ve got the biggest volume of everything that comes through from the public – calls-wise, crimes-wise and incidents of anti-social behaviour. We have the biggest number,” said inspector David Morgan.

“Roughly 55 per cent of our work comes through the wards which are aligned to Cwmbran and the other 45 per cent is aligned to the Pontypool wards. As a result, I split the officers accordingly.

“The beauty of policing in Torfaen that it doesn’t follow regular patterns. Sometimes it can go bonkers on any given day of the week,” he warned me.

I was paired with PC Chris Isaac, after the briefing session, who showed me the equipment used by officers in the Gwent force, which included tasers and body cameras.

Suddenly, a call came in across the radio, relating to a report of a stolen off-road bike whose owner had activated the tracker.

The signal was coming from the Cwmbran area. PC Isaac answered the call and the sirens were switched on.

With the blues and twos blaring, we eventually arrived at the scene, and were shortly followed by two other officers.

“There was a call relating to a tracker on a stolen bike. It was taken from a break in the early hours in the morning from Usk and its location was showing in Cwmbran,” said PC Isaac.

PC Isaac and his colleagues began to look around the area for signs of the bike. He called the owner to get an exact fix on its location.

The signal was coming from a car park, but instead, a white van was sitting in the space where the bike’s tracker was emitting from.

The officers began to conduct the necessary checks on the van in an attempt to help identify its owners, while speaking to neighbours in the area which led them to a nearby property.

PC Isaac added: “We spoke to a man from the property which we were given information about. He was arrested on suspicion of burglary and we have a number of items which we are looking to recover,.

“Under the legal guidelines, we are able to access and search the property of a person in the vicinity of an arrest.”

The officers saw that an upstairs window had been left ajar.

PC Isaac said: “Although we were looking for the stolen property, we discovered a small cannabis cultivation. At this point, it changes from not just the stolen items, but also a small cannabis factory.

“We take that into account but it is still our aim to find the stolen goods. After that comes all the bagging of the evidence and the paperwork. Luckily we recovered a key which we believe will fit with the van that we recovered.”

With the evidence bagged, and the scene secured, we returned to the police station at around 7.45pm.

“A lot of the time, we find that it does spiral from one issue into others,” said PC Isaac.

“However, it is a team effort. A lot of officers were involved in this incident and hopefully, it will result in a positive outcome.”

Despite being one of the smallest local authorities in Wales, Torfaen remains the most difficult area to police, according to inspector Morgan.

“The issue is the population size," he said. "We have a lot of people living here and there are some tough estates. The issues in Cwmbran are different to towns in valleys, like Pontypool and Blaenavon.

“The challenge for us is when the incidents become quite widespread as we can only channel our resources to certain areas at certain times."

“We have seen that community work in the Greenmeadow area is starting to work, as well as punitive action against the youngsters who are causing the issues, and that strategy will be deployed in Pontnewydd as it is a different group of people,” he added.

“The issue with Torfaen is that you think you’ve got on top of it and it will pop up elsewhere.

“We have to cover such an array of different issues.

“We were called out to a location in Llantarnam because ducks and ducklings were crossing the road. We were asked to stop the traffic to help the birds cross the road. This job can be very diverse.”