New Newark neighbourhood sergeants Kate Taylor and Rishi Thobhani make crime stopping vow

From working a decade’s worth of cases as a detective, to taking down a knife-wielding thief in the street, Newark’s new sergeants bring a wealth of different skills.

Kate Taylor and Rishi Thobhani have both recently taken up posts as sergeants within the neighbourhood policing team, and have a good mix of experiences behind them.

For Sergeant Kate Taylor, the switch is both a very familiar one and a trip back down memory lane, as the experienced officer started out on the response team in the town back in 2003.

She has spent 16 of the years since working as a detective — again in and around Newark.

Sergeant Taylor aims to utilise the techniques she’s picked up in that time to help make the town a safer place.

“It is really nice to be able to do a full 360 and come back to where it all started for me,” she said.

“To have the privilege of being a sergeant on the beat team here in Newark couldn’t be better for me really, as neighbourhoods was something I wanted to get back into.

“I’ve obviously picked up some skills during my time as a detective that I’ll be looking to bring to the table, but the team here are amazing already and have got skills coming out of their ears, so I’m looking forward to picking bits up from them too.

“The main aim going forward is to tackle the crimes the community have told us are most important to them, so hopefully my detective background will be able to provide a bit of a different perspective and help make a difference.”

Sergeant Rishi Thobhani, who has been with Nottinghamshire Police since 2022, has taken a different path to Newark/

He joins the neighbourhood team from Hucknall response — and it was while on that team in May last year that, while off-duty, he spotted prolific thief Michael Delaney running down Arnold’s High Street with items he’d just stolen.

Despite not being on shift at the time, the then police constable chased down Delaney, who responded by producing a large knife and threatening to stab him, with the tip of the weapon held only a few centimetres away from the officer’s face.

Undeterred by the danger, Sergeant Thobhani managed to call 999 to report what was happening, wrestled the knife away from Delaney and detained him on the ground until other officers arrived at the scene.

The 36-year-old thief, of Beckhampton Road, Bestwood, was later jailed for 18 months, thanks to the actions of Sergeant Thobhani.

Newark residents can expect the same commitment to tackling crime from their new sergeant going forward, with the officer vowing to focus on the community’s priority crime areas, which incidentally currently includes stopping shoplifters.

He said: "Whether we’re on shift in uniform or off-duty, we’re all police officers at the end of the day, so will always look to help where we can, if we see anything going on that doesn’t seem right.

“If something like last year’s incident happened again, I wouldn’t think twice about taking action, because it’s our duty to do whatever we can to try and keep people safe.

“I wasn’t the first officer to respond to an ongoing incident while off-duty though and I won’t be the last.

“In fact, I know of numerous examples of this happening within the Newark neighbourhood team, so it’s been a real pleasure to join this team.

“We’re all committed to doing everything in our powers to make Newark a safer and better place to live, while targeting the priority policing areas the public have told us to focus on — currently antisocial behaviour and shoplifting — and that focus won’t change while I’m the sergeant.”