On The Beat with Inspector Mark Lund

I am Mark Lund, your new Police Inspector for South Leeds. Firstly, I would like to tell you a little about myself.

I have been a police officer for 21 years. All of my service has been in the Leeds district working a variety of front-line roles. I was promoted to Inspector in May this year. Prior to that I was one of the Sergeants working within the South Leeds Neighbourhood Policing Team with responsibility for Middleton and Belle isle. I have also worked as a police constable in the old managed approach team within the Holbeck area.

I feel my policing experience will be invaluable, as I work with the local communities and partner agencies to increase the quality of life and reduce crime and the fear of crime in South Leeds area. I have good working relationships with several partner agencies due to my time as a sergeant with a number of ongoing projects aimed at tackling youth related anti-social behaviour, which I will be looking to introduce across the wider South Leeds area.

As we move out of the summer months towards the Halloween and bonfire period, reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB) inevitably increase. We appreciate just how much ASB impacts on our communities, and we continually review our deployments as well as run proactive operations to target areas where we have significant issues.

Sometimes you will see a visible presence, sometimes our officers will work in plain clothes or under cover. We work closely with our partners including Leeds City Council and our elected members to problem solve and disrupt criminal activity and anti-social behaviour. We are working closely with the dedicated off-road bike team on operation Ashfield looking to tackle the anti-social use of motorbikes.

We will be running several initiatives and educational events for the upcoming Hate Crime awareness week which is running from the 14–21 October.

The assistance of the public is key to us being able to achieve our aims and I would encourage people to approach local officers to report incidents or pass on information or to attend local community meetings. We utilise this information to inform our patrol plans.

Community meetings and other contact opportunities are advertised on social media pages on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) and I would encourage as many residents as possible to attend these meetings. Details can also be found on the Leeds South Neighbourhood Policing Team website which can be found at www.westyorkshire.police.uk/my-neighbourhood/leeds/leeds-south

I aim to provide you with regular updates on the hard work that my team are doing. I will update you on the issues and concerns highlighted to us and keep you informed as to what we will be doing to address these issues and concerns.
I will work closely with the local community and partners to achieve our aims together. This is something that I am passionate about.

Sir Robert Peel, who established the first police service, famously stated:

“The police are the people, and the people are the police.”

This is something that I have embraced during my career and is even more pertinent for Neighbourhood Policing Teams.

Finally, staff volunteers, special constables and cadets all have a really important part to play in the delivery of policing to the communities. If you would like to volunteer in some capacity or would like some more information about the available opportunities this can be found at www.westyorkshire.police.uk/jobs-volunteer.

This post was written by Insp Mark Lund of the Leeds South Neighbourhood Policing Team

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