Zero tolerance, beat-based policing cuts crime. 

• Police regularly patrolling and getting to know an area builds their knowledge of it and links to it. It means more cooperation from local people, more idea of where crime hotspots are and of who the known troublemakers are.
• People find police on patrol much easier to approach and provide useful intelligence than police parked, or speeding past, in cars.
• Knowing police are on regular patrol deters criminals. Even when arrest rates stay the same, crime has still fallen after zero tolerance policing was introduced - criminals didn't want to risk it any more.
• Often it is the so called 'minor' offences and anti-social behaviour that ruin quality of life most - police must always take them seriously.
• Criminals rarely start out by committing the most serious offences - but they often progress to them after no one stops them from committing other offences.

I support zero tolerance policing in Darlington and County Durham.