POLICE in Brighton have seized passports to stop vulnerable youngsters travelling to the war-torn Middle East.

Brighton and Hove divisional commander Nev Kemp said he had authorised monitoring of a number of teenagers after two brothers died fighting in Syria.

He added that he had personally authorised monitoring one girl who he thought would be probably be in Syria by now if not for authorities’ intervention.

He said: “There was one particular case, or a couple of cases, where we have had to get court orders to prevent people associating with other people, or travelling.

“We had to seize passports; we have even had to monitor this one person who was only a teenager really closely, because we thought there was a real risk that they were about to go and were being radicalised.

“We were successful in preventing that. It was a girl and she is still here in Brighton and seems to be flourishing.

“So we had to go to court to get her passport and we monitored her very closely which threw up some quite difficult ethical decisions.

“Looking back now, I am delighted, I think it was the right thing to do.”

Mr Kemp said he could not go into specifics on the way they monitored the young girl, adding: “We had to keep a really close eye on her for a while, because even though we might have had her passport, people can still sometimes travel on a false passport. We had the support of her mum.”

He said monitoring could be both covert and overt, explaining: “There will be covert monitoring but also sometimes conditions [such as] they have to sign on at the police station.”

He said he did not know exactly how many teenagers Sussex Police had authorised monitoring over radicalisation fears but said it would be a “tiny number” in single figures.

In 2014 three brothers from Brighton’s Deghayes family, Jaffar, Abdullah and Amer, went to fight with an Al-Qaeda affiliated group in Syria.

Jaffar, 17, and Abdullah, 18, died, while Amer is believed to still be in the country.

They were joined by Ibrahim Kamara, 19, who also died there, and a fifth young man believed to still be there.

A team set up in the wake of those departures to tackle extremism identified 28 city children at risk of being radicalised, The Argus reported in April after details were leaked to a national newspaper.

Mr Kemp said the force was currently working with a number at risk “in the teens”.

He said: “It was much higher to begin with – so even that in itself is a good sign, we have sort of halved it I think.

"That number has come down pretty consistently since we started, but our threshold has not changed.

“So I think that combined with the fact others have not gone to Syria shows, one we are not missing people, and two when we are engaging them we are having a positive effect on them."

Mr Kemp said that the fact others had not gone to Syria since meant authorities’ work tackling radicalisation had been a “massive success”.

He said: “We got off to a very bad start in Brighton with the number of people that went to Syria but since they went and we have really worked closely with the local authority in particular, nobody has gone.

“So for a few years now nobody else has gone to Syria from Brighton which is a huge success. And sometimes it has been very difficult.”

In March 2015 The Argus reported the High Court made a 16-year-old Brighton boy a ward of court due to the risk he might also go to fight in Syria.

Mr Kemp said police worked closely with schools and colleges on tackling extremism.

He said he did not know how many referrals there had been from Brighton to the Government’s anti-extremism Channel programme.

‘I SPEND MY ENTIRE TIME WORRYING ABOUT BRIGHTON’

Divisional Commander Nev Kemp answers our questions about crime in Brighton and Hove.

In what ways has crime changed since you took over?

Burglary is much better. We have got the lowest-ever levels of house burglaries.

In some weeks we used to have 40 or 50, now it’s not uncommon to have a number in the teens.

Nor it is uncommon to have 24 hours with no burglaries at all.

A response team now makes sure burglars coming out of prison comply with their conditions, such as a curfew.

Some have said they feel they have two choices: stop offending and comply or go back to prison.

Is it right the rate of burglaries solved in Brighton is around 10 per cent?

Yes it’s normally between 10 and 15 per cent. It has gone as high as 20, w. Which sounds low but it’s important to look at it in context.

For example, we caught somebody who is known for burglary in a car that had been stolen from a house, with property in the car that had been stolen from the house.

But he was charged with handling stolen goods, not burglary. And that is not an uncommon scenario. Ninety six out of 100 people are really satisfied with the service they get from us on burglaries.

Given the reduction in PCSOs, are you worried about less information coming from the community to police?

It worries me. I don’t think there is any evidence to support it at the moment but I spend my entire time worrying about Brighton.

What’s really important for me is we still have people’s confidence.

We are in danger of losing that to a degree if people perceive there is not that local point of contact or that we are too busy to deal with particular problems. I am absolutely confident that if people need us, we will be there.

Do you still arrest people for begging following an outcry over the tactic earlier this year?

That is still a tactic that we will use because it helps. But it is a last resort.

That will be somebody that other services have engaged with and has decided they want to keep begging, often in the same spot.

We know that person is vulnerable. We also know that a lot of members of the public and the shopkeeper nearby and all the rest of it, they don’t like it, and it is not good for the city.

It does not reflect well on the city, it does not advertise it as a great place to come and it is bad for individuals.

So in those circumstances we will still make arrests for begging.

It allows us to be able to determine if they are still on drugs. The court can give them an order around rehab and we can apply for things like a community behaviour order.

This year, 1,088 people were treated for heroin addiction in Brighton – what are you doing to limit the supply?

We are not going to be able to prevent people taking drugs if they want to.

But equally we will keep targeting the people dealing drugs. We have officers that are working on tackling organised crime in Brighton day in, day out.

What about how you deal with cannabis, for example – I don’t see prosecutions for possession?

No – prosecutions for cannabis are very few and far between now. We are focused on the people supplying it.

That’s not to say we don’t do anything. If we find somebody with cannabis we will confiscate it and they may get a caution or a criminal record.

What we don’t tend to do, if it’s a one-off, is prosecute them for it. It’s not in the public interest.

Wouldn’t more prosecutions for possession reduce supply?

I think it would require such a massive investment to do that.

There are quite a lot of people in Brighton and Hove who use cannabis. That’s not to say we condone it or tolerate it at all but to try and tackle it that way would be disproportionate.

It’s much better to try and get the people who are pushing it.

Recent figures showed there were only four black officers in Sussex Police. Are any of them in Brighton and Hove?

In Brighton and Hove in terms of visible black or minority ethnic (BME) officers, it is something like 3.9 per cent, which is pretty poor.

We know we could do better so we have been doing a lot of work here, for example through our work experience and mentoring programmes.

It’s a bit of a slow burn but we are making big steps.

Figures show that overall in Sussex you have a higher chance of getting stop and searched if you are black

It is higher – but it is much healthier than it is elsewhere.

The problem with those figures was if you were an officer and you stopped someone who was black, you would always put your form in because you knew there was a higher chance of complaint.

If you stopped someone who was white you would only sometimes put your form in, so that skewed the figures.

We have done a lot of training and put real effort into it.

Now it’s less disproportionate and the arrest ratio is much better.

But why do you think it was or is the case that you are more likely to be stopped and searched if you are a black teenager in Sussex?

I think partly it was the recording of it but I think it is much wider than just policing.

There is a disproportionate number of BME people in prison.

I think part of that is they are a product of the system that from the off has probably treated them unfairly.

It has meant that when they get to their teenage years they are more likely to come into contact with police.

I think partly we are dealing with a symptom of a wider issue.