THE new head of community policing in the town has vowed to work with Swindon Council to share information in a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.

Chief Inspector Paul Granger, who recently took over as head of neighbourhood policing from the retiring Mike Jones, said he was committed to keeping crime at a year-on-year low across the town, but also wanted to combat a rise in complaints about nuisance behaviour.

With 26 years’ service in the force, Chief Insp Granger has had a diverse career and would perhaps be best known for his role as the lead detective in the Linda Razzell murder, for which her estranged husband Glyn Razzell was convicted without police ever finding her body.

In his new role he is hoping to to improve intelligence sharing between police and other agencies.

“My main target is to work with the council to link our intelligence and their data to help reduce anti-social behaviour,” he said.

“We have different sets of data and there will be an overlap, but we will probably record more incidents. I then want to use this to hit our top offenders.

“It is always a few individuals who commit crime and anti-social behaviour and the main thing will be to target them.

“The council has things in the pipeline, like the Neighbourhood Justice Panels, and we have a key role to play in that too.

“Another important aim is to make sure we are best serving the public and we will be working closely with council workers in terms of the new wards that come in in May.”

Having started out as an area officer upon joining the force, he said the major change in policing had been technology.

He said: “We used to carry around UHF radios and if you were too far away you couldn’t pick up certain frequencies.

“Now that’s not an issue.

“But in terms of the job we do for the public, it effectively has not changed. The expectations on us, in terms of both what we do and the way we do it have changed enormously – and for the better.”

Anyone with any information about crime or anti-social behaviour should contact Wiltshire Police on 101.