South Yorkshire police ranked in top five

SOUTH Yorkshire Police have been ranked fourth in an unofficial league tables of forces in England and Wales.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabularies, which assessed the performance of 43 police forces, recorded improvements in South Yorkshire for the period between April 2006 and March 2007.

The inspection report, revealed this morning, said in all three key performance areas - tackling crime, managing resources and efficiency savings, and the fairness of policing and rate of satisfaction felt by people dealt with by the South Yorkshire force - improvements have been made.

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It rated the force as "good" at tackling crime, protecting vulnerable people and handling serious crime and public protection issues.

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The force was given a "fair" rating for meeting its local priorities.

Chief Constable Med Hughes said: "These good grades show that we have made great strides in improving our service to the public over the last several years.

"Our objective for next year is to improve again, particularly on local priorities. One of the main reasons for this is the public's perception of higher crime rates for offences such as burglary and car crime, as identified by the British Crime Survey.

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"Our figures show that actual recorded incidents of burglary and car crime have fallen by 45 per cent and 19 per cent respectively over the last four years and further reductions have been recorded so far this year.

"We've responded to calls from the public to improve neighbourhood policing and we are continually looking at ways in which to provide more resources at key times.

"The force is also working with our crime reduction partners to reduce anti-social behaviour across the county and only yesterday helped launched the joint initiative, Operation Mischief, to tackle this problem in the lead up to Bonfire Night."

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