Chief constable: Tough sentences 'wipe' out violent crime
Tough and lengthy prison sentences help to 'wipe' violent crime from the streets, the country's second most senior officer has implied.
West Midlands Chief Constable Dave Thompson said the 'extraordinary sentences' handed to those in riots had all but 'wiped' gun crime from the region.
But he put the return of violent crime to parts of the West Midlands down to offenders 'forgetting' the message that was sent out by judges in the wake of the violence that swept Wolverhampton and Birmingham in 2011.
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He told the West Midlands Strategic Crime Board: "There has been a number of cases recently of violent crime, and like what I have said previously about gun crime, it is of a concerning regularity.
"One thing I would say about that is going back a couple of years we saw some quite extraordinary sentences handed out to those who took part in the riots. That seemed to virtually wipe violent crime off the streets.
"Now I think one or two people have forgotten that."
There were 13 murders in the Black Country during 2015 – the highest for three years.
There has also been a rise in the number of guns being fired across parts of Birmingham.
And new data released in a Freedom of Information act shows that West Midlands Police have been informed of 2,954 incidents of violence in a public place where a weapon was either used or being carried since 2011.
The figures work out at roughly one incident a day between 2011 and 2015.
Sandwell has the highest rate of reports of local areas with 871, followed by Wolverhampton with 800, Walsall with 669 and Dudley with 615. The weapons either used or discovered as a result of attacks covers knuckle dusters, CS spray, kitchen knives, handguns, shotguns, meat cleavers, axes and explosives.
Mr Thompson's comments are the nearest a senior officer from the force has made calling on tougher prison sentences by judges.
The West Midlands Violence Prevention Alliance has been set up with other public sector bodies to identify and tackle the 'root causes' of violence.
He took up the top job last month following the retirement of Chris Sims.
One of Mr Thompson's first acts was to train more than 20 new firearms officers to boost the force's response capabilities in the wake of the Paris terror attack last year.
