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26 Nov 2007 : Column 196W—continued
Police: Misrepresentation
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people were charged with wasting police time, other than by making malicious complaints against the police, in each police force area in England and Wales in each year since 1997. [167018]
Mr. McNulty: The information requested is not held centrally. Wasting police time by giving false reports is a summary offence and is not included in the Home Office recorded crime statistics.
Police: Rural Areas
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on her policy for rural policing. [166965]
Mr. McNulty: The full implementation of Neighbourhood Policing is due to be completed by April 2008 when all 43 police forces in England and Wales will have local neighbourhood policing teams covering their entire force area. Neighbourhood policing is designed to be tailored to the priorities and needs of local communities whether they are urban or rural.
The NPIA National Neighbourhood Policing Programme Team is in the final process of designing a guide to assist practitioners at all levels in the service in delivering and sustaining neighbourhood policing within rural communities. This is identifying and addressing neighbourhood priorities, improving engagement and delivering safer neighbourhoods where people have confidence in the police and their partners to deal with the issues that affect them directly.
“Building Communities, Beating Crime” provided a vision of a police service that is both accessible and responsive to the needs of the citizen. “Neighbourhood Policing—Your Police, Your Community, Our Commitment” sets out the plans to deliver a neighbourhood policing team in every area by 2008. This guide will assist in making the vision and plans a reality.
Police: Stun Guns
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department on how many occasions Taser stun guns have been (a) drawn, (b) arced as a demonstration warning, (c) applied in a drive stun and (d) fired by each police force since 2003. [165669]
Mr. McNulty: Five police forces in England and Wales started trialling the use of Taser in April 2003. In September 2004 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary approved chief officers throughout England and Wales to deploy Taser to authorised firearms officers in their force where a firearms authority has been granted in accordance with criteria laid down in the ACPO Manual of Guidance on Police Use of Firearms.
Since 20 July 2007 authorised police firearms officers in England and Wales have been able to deploy Taser in operations or incidents where the use of firearms is not authorised, but where they are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves or the subject. The deployment of Taser by specially trained police units who are not firearms officers, but who are facing similar threats of violence, is also being trialled in 10 police forces. The 12-month trial began on 1 September 2007.
The use of Taser by police forces in England and Wales has been provided by the Association of Chief Police Officers and is shown in the following table. The figures in the table do not include uses by authorised firearms officers outside a firearms operation or in the trial by specially trained units. These figures have not yet been centrally collated and verified.
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