New Assistant Chief Constable Confirmed

North Yorkshire Police have announced this week that Sue Cross is confirmed as one of the forces Assistant Chief Constables, following the retirement of Peter Bagshaw last year. ACC Cross was successful after a two day recruitment process and will take responsibility for Territorial Policing.

Speaking about her appointment, ACC Cross said: "It is a real honour to be working for the people of North Yorkshire and the City of York. I have lived in the county since 2002 and consider it to be a fantastic place to live and work. North Yorkshire and the City of York are amongst the safest counties in England and my job, working with our staff, partners and the Police Authority is to make sure it stays that way. We have many challenges but we have the support of our local communities and a high level of partnership working on which we can continue to build. The Force has strong Safer Neighbourhood Policing Teams we are now developing further to ensure that we deliver the best service possible. Through the work of Operation Drystone we are becoming much more responsive to ensure we are tackling local problems as quickly and effectively as possible.

"Although North Yorkshire and the City of York have low crime and incident levels we still have disproportionately higher levels of fear of crime. I aim to understand this more and work with our staff and partners including the media to ensure that we reduce the fear of crime. To this end every member of staff is an ambassador for the service and I will be working with them to ensure that we are taking every opportunity to give accurate and positive messages about what is happening in our communities as too often the good local news is overshadowed by events outside of North Yorkshire and the City of York."

Chairman of the North Yorkshire Police Authority Councillor Jane Kenyon added: "We are delighted that Sue has accepted her appointment as Assistant Chief Constable having been Acting ACC since Peter Bagshaw retired last year. She has worked for the force for three years and is very clearly focused on the direction the Chief Constable and Authority is taking the force. Sue undertook a difficult two day process for the position and proved that she has a passion for Safer Neighbourhoods policing and working with the communities to achieve success. We very much look forward to working with her closely over the months and years to come to embrace her ideas in how we can further develop policing together"

An experienced officer who started her career 25 years ago in West Yorkshire, ACC Cross worked in uniform in CID in Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield and as Detective Chief Inspector in charge of the economic crime unit, Sue transferred to Cleveland Police in 2002 working in both Middlesbrough as Crime Manager and as Head of Professional Standards. In 2006 she transferred to North Yorkshire Police as Crime Commander for Western Area. Sue led Operation Wiske, which last year saw David Hodgson convicted of the murder of Jenny Nicholl and following this became Head of the Operations Directorate with responsibility for Force Communications Department, Operations and Contingency Planning, community safety and Administration of Justice prior to taking up her current post in an acting capacity in September 2008.