Operation REBUS

A key priority of the Thames Valley Violence Reduction Unit’s strategy to reduce violence is to ensure those who commit violence are effectively brought to justice.

In order to support this priority, the Violence Reduction Unit have initiated Op Rebus whose aims are to:

  • Bring offenders to justice in a speedy and timely manner for Knife Crime, Violence and County Drug Lines drug dealing (CDL PWITS), therefore reducing further crime
  • Improve investigative standards in Knife Crime, Violence and CDL PWITS
  • Improve the quality of service for victims and the wider community
  • Reduce the volume of outstanding Knife Crime, Violence and CDL PWITS offences
  • Reduce the number of suspects released under investigation for Knife Crime, Violence and CDL PWITS

Op Rebus will support Local Police Area’s to deliver these aims by:

  1. Responding to fast time incidents and working with LPA’s to review those individuals who are believed to be involved in incidents of violent crime and developing appropriate investigative strategies and risk based management plans.
  2. Utilising the Serious Violence Dashboard to identify those top ten individuals across Thames Valley who present the greatest risk of being involved in the commission of serious violence. Engaging with the relevant LPA’s and offering to develop an investigative overview of the individual and develop a risk based management plan.
  3. Producing a list of those most likely to be involved in serious violence on each LPA.  Working with the LPA to review all current and recent investigations, for those individuals and identifying any patterns and outstanding actions for the individuals and recording them in one Risk Management Occurrence on NICHE. This will enable offending patterns and outstanding enquires to be easily identified and prioritised appropriately.
  4. Identifying all outstanding violence, knife crime and PWIT offences and undertake supervisory reviews of these offences, identify outstanding enquires, direct the investigation, seek Out of Court Disposals, or file if no reasonable lines of enquiry managing any outstanding RUI’s.

OP Rebus has a team of Civilian Case Investigators who are able to assist in the above work and also provide additional investigative capacity to LPA’s when required. There are currently six Civilian Case Investigators employed until the end of March 2021, three at Milton Keynes and one at Slough, Reading and High Wycombe.  The VRU are currently in the process of recruiting four more Civilian Case Investigators to enhance the capacity of support they are able to offer.  The case investigators work across the whole of the force to support operations/weeks of actions and if not committed are working with LPA staff to investigate violent crime and PWIT’s offences.

To date, ten LPA’s have been supported through Op Rebus with LPA’s receiving both support through the provision of case investigators providing support to major enquiries or operations and providing support for the review and management of individuals and outstanding crime.