So today I travelled to Battle in East Sussex to meet with PC Daryl Holter who is one of the Heritage crime officers who cover both East and West Sussex. Unfortunately the chief inspector couldn't make it as he'd been called away but i had an excellent chat with Daryl about all things Heritage crime.
As I understand it Sussex Police have only had Heritage Crime officers, who do have other non Heritage Crime duties to, for 18 months so they are a fairly new team.
At the moment the teams focus is on spreading awareness of what Heritage Crime is amongst the residents of Sussex by going out and about meeting farmers, archaeologists, PAS staff, detectorists etc. At the moment reports of Heritage Crime are quite low but at it's impossible to know how much of this is down to the public's lack of knowledge about what Heritage Crime might be and that they can ring 101 or indeed 999 if they want to report an incident. The ringing 999 point is interesting as it was Daryl's view that should one see someone detecting let us say next to Battle Abbey then they would want to respond as quickly as possible and that Heritage Crime should be treated just like any other crime.
Daryl's experience of nighthawkers was that they fell into two categories, the ignorant and the more 'professional' dedicated nighthawker. Part of his job is therefore to educate the ignorant as to why they can't just detect where-ever they want. I think the job of education is something that responsible detectorists, detecting groups, NCMD, PAS and detector manufacturers etc can all perhaps do more to help with.
With the more professional nighthawkers it's trickier as whilst it is a case of evidence and intelligence gathering it's not always possible to get enough evidence for a prosecution. However having a word with a possible suspect to let them know they are on the Police's radar can be an effective way of getting them to stop. Daryl did however say that they have had very few reports of nighthawking, but again it's difficult to know the reasons behind this.
With regard to information on a nighthawking crime scene Sussex Police work closely with County archaeologists and the local FLO who help out with regards to information about the area that affected with regards to it's history and to identify what may have been found on the suspect.
It was interesting to learn about the different types of crime they have to deal with especially a spate of post box thefts. Apparently some of the old post boxes can be worth hundreds or thousands of pounds and are stolen to order for people who want them as an ornamental 'feature'.
We did briefly discuss licensing and this wasn't something that they had considered.
Daryl kindly gave me the contact for my local Heritage Crime officer so I will be in touch with them next to see what's happening on my doorstep!
All in all a good day.
Interesting day you had there for sure. Its good to read what the police are doing to combat illegal metal detecting.
ReplyDeleteThanks janner, was just interesting and had never been to Battle before :)
ReplyDeleteA key fact from the Oxford Archaology report into Nighthawks and Nighthawking produced for English Heritage, showed clearly that the activity was lower since previous reports into the issue. Despite every effort to find the evidence it clearly seems that such criminal activity is a minority issue when compared with the overall Heritage Crime burden. I am not surprised that this was the case as it is in the interest of the hobby's detractors to say that hawking is an issue to grab the media headlines with liberal doses of hearsay and anecdotal evidence, when in reality it is not the case.
ReplyDeleteSteve, how would you account then for the discrepancies between the OA "nighthawking report and the nearly-contemporary "Conservation of Scheduled Monuments in Cultivation (COSMIC)" project (Oxford Archaeology, 2006) which found that 17.5% farmers who took part in the project said they were suffering from the visits of trespassing and illegal artefact hunters to both scheduled and unscheduled sites on their property? On only one of the sites reported as having been looted in this survey the looting had independently been reported, which implies that the ‘Nighthawk Survey’ was not being informed by any means of all sites being looted (in this case 86%), and that landowners - not metal detectorists as the Nighthawking survey postulated - are a key source for this missing information.
ReplyDeleteYou might like to take a look at my blog posts about this contemporary with the publication of the report, where I argue (justified in some detail) that the published report gives a false picture. So far nobody has challenged those arguments. Maybe you'd like to be the first?
Steve, how then do you account for the fact that the near contemporary "Conservation of Scheduled Monuments in Cultivation (COSMIC)" project (Oxford Archaeology, 2006) found that 17.5% of the farmers surveyed were suffering from the visits of trespassing and illegal artefact hunters to both scheduled and unscheduled sites on their property? On only one of the sites reported as having been looted in this survey the looting had independently been reported, which implies that the ‘Nighthawk Survey’ was not being informed by any means of all sites being looted (in this case 86%), and that landowners are a key source for this missing information, rather than (as the Nighthawking report assumed) metal detectorists.
ReplyDeleteIn fact on my blog when the report was published, I gave a whole load of other quite detailed evidence to show the report was giving a false picture. Nobody has challenged those arguments so far. Maybe, since it seems to mean so much to you, you'd like to be the first.