Staffordshire Police Federation chair Lee Robinson says “more boots on the ground” are needed to continue to reduce the number of violent deaths in the county.
Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed nine homicides were committed in the Force area between April 2021 and March 2022.
The figure was down on the previous 12 months when 16 homicides were committed in Staffordshire, a fall of 44 per cent.
The homicide rate over the three-year period in the county to the year ending March 2022 was 10.2 per million population, lower than the average for England and Wales which, which was 10.8 per million population.
Lee said: “It’s pleasing to see the numbers of violent deaths in our county is falling, bucking the national trend, but our members are not getting complacent.
“Any life lost to violence is always one too many and our members are doing all they can to continue to cut violence and violent deaths.
“To do that we need more boots on the ground to build relationships and trust within our communities, and to gather the intelligence and information to prevent violence and to get weapons off our streets.
“And we need a multi-agency approach – it can’t just be down to policing. We need to work with schools, councils, housing associations and other parts of the criminal justice system so that we can intervene before anything devastating happens.”
Nationally, homicide returned to pre-pandemic levels in the year to March 2022, according to the ONS figures.
There were 696 victims in the last year, 130 more – or a 23 per cent increase – than the year ending March 2021 when Government restrictions meant there was less social contact.
The ONS data also showed:
- The homicide rate over the three-year period to the year ending March 2022 was 39.7 per million population for the black ethnic group, approximately four times higher than for the white ethnic group (8.9 per million population)
- 282 homicides, approximately 4 in 10, were committed using a knife or sharp instrument, a 19 per cent increase compared with the previous year, and the highest annual total since the Home Office’s homicide index began in 1946
- There were 69 homicide victims aged 13 to 19 years. Of these, 51 were killed by a knife or sharp instrument
- There were 134 domestic homicides in the year ending March 2022, 18 more than the previous year, and a similar number to the average over the last decade of 129
- Males accounted for 72 per cent of homicide victims in the latest year, but 93 per cent of convicted suspects.
