Police covering Oxfordshire deal with half a million issues in six months, figures show

New statistics show Thames Valley Police attended 81,000 incidents and made 16,000 arrests between April 1 – September 30.

Officers made 16,239 arrests, found 3290 missing people and sadly attended 711 tragic sudden deaths, supporting families at the most difficult time.

Roads Policing officers and response teams attended 3228 collisions.1,007 arrests were made relating to drink driving, 1,220 for driving while distracted by a mobile phone and 1,862 people were arrested for not wearing a seatbelt.

Statistics released this week show the detection of distraction offences such as driving while using a mobile phone, have increased by 78 per cent, while seatbelt offences are up by 72 per cent compared with the same six month period of last year.

In terms of speeding, 48,794 offences were detected by officers while 38,821 were detected speeding by cameras.

Detection of speeding offences has increased by 91 per cent from the same period last year, while fatal collisions are down slightly on this time last year and down even further on the previous year.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Bettington, of the Joint Roads Policing Unit said: “We will continue to work together with partners across a range of agencies to find ways to reduce and prevent offending. Everyone should be able to use our roads in a safe and healthy way. We will educate where appropriate to prevent re-offending and explain where there is an opportunity to encourage safer use of our roads.”

Action on domestic abuse and violence against women and girls continues with TVP officers committed to tackling domestic violence, with 28% of all arrests made being related to domestic violence.

April – September this year saw a 22 per cent increase in charges for rape and an 11 per cent increase in charges for other sexual offences compared to the same period in 2022.

Chief Constable Jason Hogg said: “In the last six months, we have responded to more than half a million contacts from the public and attended 81,143 incidents - an incredible demand on our 8,400 officers, staff and volunteers.

“I’m very proud of the job we do keeping our communities safe across Thames Valley, by responding to emergencies and disrupting and preventing crime across the three counties. Increased rape offence charges and domestic abuse arrests show how our proactive work targeting these crime types is showing real progress.

“Behind each of these numbers are the victims of crime, and a priority for the force over the coming year is to place them at the centre of our service and work tirelessly to improve our service to all.” 

Numbers at a glance from 1 April 2023 - 30 September 2023 – there were 507,833 total contacts from the public – up 2 per cent on the same period in 2022.

Of these 220,352 were calls to 999, 231,602 calls to 101 and 55,879 online reports.

3,307 missing people found; 384 of these were deemed high risk and 1685 were children.

81,143 incidents were attended and 16,239 arrests made. There were 393 knife crime arrests, 66 rape offence charges and 4616 domestic abuse arrests.