'More money' needed to police migrants
Updated on 19 September 2007
Cambridgeshire's Chief Constable demands more money over the strain placed on police by the surge in eastern European migrants.
Early in the morning - in Ilford, London - a Metropolitan police assault team prepare for a raid.
They've received intelligence that the occupants of this house may have links to organised criminals.
Inside the small terraced home - they find 27 people. 16 are children. All are Romanians.
In each bedroom, a family. In the kitchen and lounge there's another family.
They're looking for stolen goods such as mobile phones - part of a wider investigation into Romanian criminal gangs operating in Britain.
These pictures - a graphic illustration of how migration is presenting very different challenges for the police in parts of the UK. A point made forcefully this morning by the chief constable of Cambridge .
Crime, in Cambridgeshire , says Spence, is actually falling but the nature of that crime is changing to reflect the shifting cultural profile of the county. A county which she expects will attract another 69,000 migrant workers over the next decade.
According to Cambridgeshire police - the number of immigrants arrested for drink driving has gone up significantly. From 57 in 2004 to 306 last year.
There is, they say, an "international dimension" to crime in the county - more cases identified of cannabis factories, credit card skimming and human trafficking.
As with the ongoing metropolitan police investigation into Romanian gangs - Cambridgeshire police say they now find themselves having to travel overseas to interview witnesses.
their translation costs are now close to £1m a year.
It's not that migrants are responsible for more crime - it's just that when they're involved as victims or offenders, it costs more.
What the police are saying
Migrant workers are said to contribute £125 billion a year to the British economy., We went to one strawberry farm in Nottinghamshire which relies heavily on Eastern European labourers -
the owner of the farm considered today's comments by the chief constable as ill-judged.
According to the office for National statistics just over 74,000 migrant workers came to the UK last year from Eastern Europe. but that figure completely ignores those who say they're here for less than 12 months. It's not just police forces who are beginning to bang the drum on this issue.
The Office of National Statistics says its doing a lot of work to improve its migration statistics.
An issue which will form a critical element of the government's new Migration Impacts Forum
For its part the government has launched a Migration Impacts Forum to look precisely at how public services cope with rising levels of migration.
Previously it was councils - now it's the police - who've raised the sensitive issue of how immigration is changing public life in Britain. They won't be the last public service bodies to focus national attention on the subject.
