New district commander on challenge police face in the era of cyber crime

New district commander on challenge police face in the era of cyber crime

19 September 2018

THE new PSNI District Commander for Newry, Mourne and Down says it’s only a matter of when, not if, a woman becomes Chief Constable.

But Superintendent Jane Humphries quickly adds that it’s unlikely to be her.

She has just taken up her new role from serving as District Commander (DC) for Fermanagh and Omagh District. Before that, she was a chief inspector in mid-Ulster, based primarily in Dungannon, for the last few years. 

After graduating with a degree in law, accountancy and finance, she joined the former RUC at the age of 23 in 1992.

She started her career in Cookstown before being promoted to sergeant six years later.

The DC went on to spend most of her years working in the west of the province as an inspector and a chief inspector, apart from a short spell working in the Belfast HQ in two departments. 

She says that she did not come from a family steeped in policing, although she’s married to a fellow police officer.

“If I’m honest, I think it took my mother a long time to get her head around it as I think she was thinking I would go down my degree line,” the senior officer says.

“I’m probably one of these people who like to fix things, which is not a good thing, and so you like to help people. If I hadn’t done that, I probably went down the line of social work or something along those lines.”

She heads up the local police district in the middle of the consultation process for the Local Policing Review which is open until November 9.

The review will explore how police can best meet public needs and demands and deliver the most effective local policing, in the wake of the Review of Public Administration (RPA) of 2015.

Some of the burning local issues no doubt will be the public’s perception of the visibility of police in the community, following the closures of stations of Saintfield, Crossgar and Killyleagh and Kilkeel over the years.

She spoke of the “anomaly” where incidence of crime was on the decrease but calls to police had increased.

“Crime is coming down year on year but the type of crime is changing and the calls for service to the police are increasing,” explains the DC.

“Ten or 15 years ago, we didn’t have the same internet crime. That’s a huge increase. There was a time that we policed the public arena and the private arena in people’s homes. But there’s now this totally new arena in this cyber world which has huge implications for policing. 

“Now you don’t have to burgle someone’s house to remove money from them. Scams and fraud are done very much through phone calls, playing on people’s vulnerability which is very much a challenge for policing. 

“We need to bring a lot of different skills into policing to allow us to handle this as it’s not our usual road traffic accident, burglar or shoplifter.

“Policing is moving from one domain into another one. It’s definitely changing the focus of where we actually use our resources. That’s a huge challenge for all policing.”

The fear of crime was also a major challenge for policing, she identified.

“You cannot underestimate how huge it is and how that actually affects people’s quality of life on a day to day basis.

“That, coupled with mental health issues within our community, is a very large challenge for policing.”

The local commander represents a new era for policing far away from the old days of station sergeant.

Like other commanders, she and her senior team use sophisticated software programmes which produce data, such as seasonality matrix for crime, which effectively helps to predict patterns and trends in local crime.

This is used to help the district’s management team deploy their officers.

For instance, she says that we are moving into the time of the year when there’s a slight increase in burglaries so Downpatrick PSNI will be stepping up patrols in certain areas, at certain times of the day and on certain days of the week. 

“There’s quite a lot of science [in what we do] but there’s still a lot of art,” said the DC. “Today analysts are invaluable to analyse the data which is shared north and south.

“People think that policing is what you see physically on the ground, but it’s almost like the tip of an ice berg as there is a huge machine behind supporting that.

“Technological advances within the PSNI have also meant that we are better equipped to have the right officers in the right place at the right time, adding value to the community and patrolling with purpose. 

“Indeed, patrolling patterns are based on thorough and detailed analysis of the nature, time and location of incidents and crimes reported to us and officer duties are detailed to reflect these.” 

The Newry, Mourne and Down public consultation event for the Local Policing Review will be held at the Burrendale Hotel, Newcastle, on Monday, October 8, at 7pm.