Wiltshire Police would like to say thank you to the public for their amazing support of our recent ‘Wanted this Winter’ campaign. The December campaign had 22 outstanding suspects successfully dealt with, saving hours of our police officer’s valuable time having to try and locate them.
Outstanding suspects were written to explaining if they continued to refuse to engage with police we would use all the tools at our disposal to try and locate them swiftly. This included circulating an appeal with their photograph on social media.
After the initial letter was sent out nine suspects handed themselves in to stop their appeal going out to the public or were arrested.
Ten suspects were arrested after their Wanted this Winter appeal went out with information from members of the public, partner agencies and even an off duty police officer playing a key part in their arrest.
Three suspects engaged with police or handed themselves in at police stations after seeing their own appeal on social media.
Swindon Hub Superintendent for Operations Adrian Burt said: “The Wanted this Winter campaign has been a great success for the Force with 22 suspects successfully dealt with.
“It has once again proven the power the public and social media has to support operational policing and solve crimes. Some of our appeals were shared hundreds of times by local communities.
“We would like to thank everyone who engaged with the campaign by either sharing our appeals or by passing us information on the whereabouts of wanted individuals. It made a real difference.
“A disproportionate amount of police time is spent trying to locate suspects who don’t want to be found. By working with our communities to find these individuals more efficiently we have saved valuable officer time and resource which can be reinvested into community policing priorities.”
There are still 8 outstanding suspects from the campaign that the police are keen to speak to. The full list of these suspects can be found on the Wiltshire Police website: https://www.wiltshire.police.
If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of any of these suspects please call police on 101 or if you wish to remain anonymous, please call Crimestoppers on 0800555111.
