Show of strength as rural officers target hare coursers

It’s the start of the hare coursing season and we’ve teamed up with neighbouring forces to combat this vicious crime.

Our Rural Engagement Team met with rural colleagues from Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk at the Audley End Estate near Saffron Walden to share information and discuss tactics to tackle the cruelty of hare coursing and the organised crime groups which profit from it.

Together with Hertfordshire, Kent and Norfolk, the seven forces in the Eastern Region pledged a year ago to work across policing borders and launched Operation Galileo to do exactly that.

Incidents of hare coursing across Essex and the other six force areas dropped to 1,415 in 2021-22 from 2,044 in 2020-21 – a fall of almost a third (31%).