New police inspector takes over in Rochford (From Southend Standard)

New police inspector takes over in Rochford

6:00pm Saturday 6th October 2012 in Echo News

A NEW police inspector has taken over in Rochford district....and has burglars, shoplifters and graffiti taggers firmly in his sights.

Insp Jeff Appleby is hoping to use his 28 years of experience to tackle key issues in Rayleigh, Rochford, and Hockley.

He had previously worked as Shoebury’s neighbourhood inspector, before spending two years planning transportation for the Olympics.
 

He takes over from Inspector Chris Higgins, who had only been in the post since March, and is now moving to neighbourhood policing in north Essex.
 

Mr Appleby said he had spent his first three days in the job studying crime trends in the area.

This showed there had been several garden sheds burgled and he will be looking to track down the culprits.

He said: “Some of the figures are quite high in terms of shoplifting. There has been some good work done around that, with Operation Pepper, so I will be seeing how that’s working.

"We’ve also had grafftiti again which has started up particularly over the last few weeks around Rochford and Rayleigh.

“I’d been keen to reduce that and see who’s responsible. I think there’s two distinct batches of tags.