Leadenham farm owner shares views on rural crime following Lincolnshire Police’s launch of Operation Galileo

A farmer run over by hare coursers on his own farm is backing the campaign to tackle the illegal blood sport.

Andrew Ward, owner of Glebe Farm, Leadenham, has worked closely with Lincolnshire Police to tackle hare coursing and rural crime after the incident, which left him needing an operation on his leg.

“I was determined to make sure those people came to justice so I supported the police throughout the investigation, they found them and they ended up getting three years in prison,” said Andrew.

The launch of Lincolnshire Police’s annual Operation Galileo took place at Mr Ward’s farm last week.

The operation aims to tackle the blood sport in which dogs are used to chase and kill hares, which was made illegal in 2004.

According to Lincolnshire Police data, hare coursing has been cut by 63% over the past year, but Mr Ward has not seen that on the ground.

He said: “The crime has increased with absolute no doubt. It is increasing all the time and even now it is worse than it was last year and last year was worse than the year before and next year will be worse than it is now.

“The police are doing all they can to help but it is the government higher up. They are not bothered about rural crime at all and they are the ones to blame for many things for agricultural and rural crime because they are constantly cutting funding and reducing the amount of money the police are having to use.

“Every time the police have a cut in budget or funding they try and police the countryside but because the cities are more important, the man power is mostly based there.”

Operation Galileo, which was started by Lincolnshire Police years ago, is seen by the farm owner as a fantastic idea that is linking 32 police forces across the country.

He said: “You need a lot of police in other counties involved in it and fortunately Lincolnshire Police has a very good team and they are really up on rural crime.

“They understand the impact it has on agricultural crime which is great.”

Mr Ward said his farm suffered a lot from hare coursing, but fly-tipping had increased significantly, as well as people damaging his fields by stealing or driving through them.

“People have been running over crops – they seem to think it is alright, that they can chase deer, chase hares at night with lights on their vehicles and run all over our field and just not worry about it,” he said.

“I would love to know who some of these people are because I would be running all over their gardens and trashing and causing the damage they cause to our fields. It costs us a lot of money to repair the damage they do.”

The past year, Mr Ward saw the difference in fly-tipping, with dumped washing machines and dishwashers replaced by lorry loads of builders' waste and asbestos.

“Sometimes we want to go into our own fields to spray a crop or do something in that field we then have to move the fly-tipping because we can’t get into our own fields,” he said.