Lincolnshire Police lead officer on rural crime: ‘How we adapted to deal with scourge of hare coursing’

Some readers of The Voice have expressed concern that Lincolnshire Police is directing large amounts of resources to tackling hare coursing.

The force’s lead for rural crime, Ch Insp Jim Tyner, responds:

There is always a balancing act and there are many people in rural communities who feel that more should be done to tackle hare coursing.

Hare coursing, and the associated intimidation and damage to crops, has a significant impact on our rural communities across Lincolnshire.

Operation Galileo has been in place for several years. At the start, this reduced the incidents of hare coursing and was rightly hailed a success. However, we noted in 2014/15 that there was an increase in hare coursing despite the deployment once again of a team.

We decided to take a different approach. We continue to have Operation Galileo in place to respond to reports of hare coursing.

However, this year, rather than a team of five officers who were expected to respond to incidents throughout the 2,687 square miles of Lincolnshire, the decision was made to equip and skill our local neighbourhood officers in the powers and legislation which relate to hunting with dogs.
This means that officers dealing with hare coursing incidents are also responding to other incidents in their communities.

Operation Galileo continues and I remain determined that we use all legislative powers available to us to deal with the scourge of hare coursing.