THERE is a new sergeant on the beat in West Devon — Sgt Pennie Channing is overseeing the PCs and PCSOs across the patch, covering Okehampton and Tavistock and the surrounding rural areas.

Sgt Channing, who is based at Okehampton Police Station, has been in post since the start of October. As the new acting neighbourhood team leader, she will be looking into ongoing issues affecting communities, as well as responding to crime incidents.

With 24 years’ experience as a police officer with Devon and Cornwall Police, she’s done stints in CID on the streets of Plymouth and Ilfracombe. She also chalked up years of experience overseeing a rural patch centering on Holsworthy and Great Torrington.

Most recently, for the past two years, Sgt Channing has been in a desk role in North Devon, working on the now-complete Chelfham Mill School inquiry into allegations of child neglect at the residential school for children with special needs near Barnstaple.

‘When that inquiry was coming to an end I was quite keen to get back into a face-to-face role, because I enjoyed problem solving and dealing with the community issues,’ she said.

‘This is a chance to get back into that role again. It is a big patch, the whole of Dartmoor and West Devon, so it will be a challenge to remotely manage things going on in different stations, and starting in a new station, there’s a huge amount of information to take on board.’

Speaking to the Times this week, she said she would hang fire on commenting on the big issues until she was fully up to speed with her new patch.

She said the focus of community policing for herself and her team involved prioritising vulnerable victims of crime.

‘Some people don’t really care (when they’ve had a theft), they’ll say they are just calling you because they need an incident reference number for the insurance claim but some people can suffer a crime which can on the surface seem like a low level crime but in fact they are completely devastated,’ she said.

‘We have to prioritise vulnerable victims. Even when we don’t solve it, we will see how we can help them get over the crime. They are more likely to be visited, and we would always refer them to partner organisations.’

She said the advantage of policing a rural patch like West Devon was that over time you got to know everyone.

‘It is different (from urban areas) in that we see the same people regularly,’ she said. ‘Community officers need to provide more support to the people they meet regularly and have a greater knowledge of ongoing issues.’