In the know

Tackling violence against women and girls

We're committed to tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) and we carry out various activities to ensure that our communities feel safe, including: 

-Plain clothed officers deployed in the night time economy to combat offences such as spiking, sexual assaults and any form of sexual harassment. 

-Work to ensure that women and girls feel safe whilst out running and walking and empowered to report incidents to police. This includes both attending engagement events and speaking to runners at local running and walking groups, and operational activities including visible patrols.  

-Plain clothed officers work on public transport with partners such as British Transport Police (BTP) to combat sexual assaults. 

-Engagement events at universities, at colleges and at local sports clubs. 

-As part of the community safety partnership, we work with Surrey County Council to analyse data reported via StreetSafe to better help deploy our teams.  

-Our Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT) and Licensing Enforcement Officers engage with ‘pub watch’ schemes, to support businesses with crime prevention activity, signposting to relevant training.  

We take VAWG related offences seriously, ensuring that we engage and understand our communities, running campaigns to both educate and prevent offences from taking place.  

When we receive reports of a crime, we will do everything in our power to investigate and hold criminals accountable. As an example, in March two separate offences were reported that involved a man following and sexually assaulting two women in the Englefield Green area.  

The statements given by both women enabled officers to narrow down the search area, within which CCTV and ring doorbell footage was gathered, along with house to house enquires. As a result, the suspect was identified on the morning of Thursday, 27 March as Ala Uddin. The 22-year-old (DOB: 17/03/2003) from Englefield Green was arrested, charged and remanded for committing a sexual offence and for sexual assault by touching. 

Clothing matching the description of that provided by both women was located at the address where Uddin was arrested. The clothing items, along with other forensics were captured by the SOCU (Science of Crime Unit), which linked Uddin to the offences.  

Thanks to the reporting and support of the investigation by both women, various teams within the Force, including Neighbourhood Response teams, Drone, Dog Unit, the Digital Intelligence and Support Unit, along with detectives from the Domestic Abuse Team, were able to identify and arrest Uddin. Who was sentenced to three years imprisonment for the offences. He has been added to the Sex Offenders Register and placed on a barring list.  

If you experience any form of harassment, please contact us via:  

If you do not wish to speak to police, you can also call independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. 

Better understanding the experiences of women and girls in Surrey is also crucial and we encourage our communities to use the Street Safe reporting tool to log any public spaces where they don’t feel safe. This enables us to develop an enhanced intelligence picture and deploy more effectively. If a crime has been committed, we always encourage people to report to police directly.