ALMOST 50 more police officers will be patrolling Southend’s seafront to stop a summer crime surge.

Chief Supt Simon Anslow of Southend Police Station said residents can expect to see 46 officers “as a minimum” on patrol across the Golden Mile as more people flocked to the town than they expected.

With the area seeing a staycation boost, and lockdown lifting, they wanted to ramp up the presence on roads and train stations to monitor people coming in who have been drinking.

Numbers will also depend on the weekend weather and football fixtures.

The summer of action comes following a wave of high-profile crimes that have swept through Leigh and Southend over the past few months.

This includes the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Luke Bellfield in Old Leigh in February, numerous dispersal orders in Leigh, a stabbing on The Broadway earlier this month, and a brawl at Pebbles One Café that saw men throwing chairs at each other.

Chief Supt Anslow said the police need to “redress the balance” to send a message that crime and anti-social behaviour “won’t be tolerated” in the town.

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He said: “As a minimum it’s my intention that we have an additional 46 officers on duty across the weekends.

“That won’t all be at one time, in the peak hours I’m hoping we will have between 20 and 40 officers, depending on the weekend and the football, that are able to be visible in Old Leigh and Marine Parade in particular and Chalkwell up to Thorpe Bay.

“If you land in an area that is a hot spot for the space of 15 minutes, you have a suppressive effect for the next 24 hours.

“In areas such as Southend seafront, that may be less time so we will be there more frequently.

“But we know that it is a proven tactic so it’s effective.”

When pressed on whether more patrols and officers should have been brought in sooner, Chief Supt Anslow said: “We did put extra patrols on.

“We are living in the same world as anyone else, Covid, the release of the lockdown, the fact we can’t go on holiday means more people are going to come to our staycation towns and we knew Southend is that kind of place.

“We had additional officers on duty, but the reality is even though we planned for it and anticipated it, the number of people coming to Southend has exceeded what we anticipated and what we were able to do.

“Our officers had been pulled away into emergency incidents and were not as visible.

“They were still able to respond quickly to stuff that’s happened, but that reassuring visual presence, we just didn’t have enough on.

“Having seen a couple of bad weekends, and they weren’t ones we were pleased to see as local people, we knew we needed to do something much bigger than an original scope of our plans.”