Meet Elizabeth Jones – Kent & Medway VRU Director

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Meet Elizabeth Jones – Kent & Medway VRU Director

Job position and organisation

Chief Inspector Lizzie Jones is the director of Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). She has served as a police officer since 2006, working within the Metropolitan Police Service and Kent Police.

Connect with Lizzie on LinkedIn: Lizzie Jones | LinkedIn

Core areas of expertise

  • Public health approaches to serious violence and violence prevention

  • Youth violence prevention and early intervention

  • Safety of women and girls

  • Child sexual exploitation and child safeguarding

  • Knife crime prevention, including safer knife replacement schemes

  • Police culture, including sexism, misogyny and police-perpetrated domestic abuse

  • Trauma-informed and evidence-led partnership working

Professional background

Lizzie joined the Metropolitan Police in 2006 and has worked across response teams, specialist squads, detective roles and neighbourhood policing over eighteen years in the service.

Within the Metropolitan Police, she worked as a detective sergeant in Southwark from 2016 to 2018. During this period, she led on work relating to child sexual exploitation (CSE), which involved working with partners in local authority, charities and academia. Together, they helped to change how professionals understood children involved in County Lines – moving away from seeing them as offenders or “gang members” and towards recognising that they may be victims of exploitation by adults.

Lizzie presented her team’s work and findings at a conference to multiple agencies and families affected by knife crime at the Damilola Taylor Centre.

Following her time at the Met, in late 2018 Lizzie moved to Kent Police, joining the Adult Rape Investigation Team. She then became a neighbourhood team inspector for Tonbridge and Malling (known at the time as the Community Safety Unit), dealing with local crime, antisocial behaviour and youth engagement. She has since held detective and neighbourhood inspector roles, and a district commander position, within Kent Police.

In 2024, Lizzie was appointed Director of the Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), where she leads on a public health approach to violence reduction. This means understanding the circumstances behind violent behaviour and intervening early, rather than responding only after an offence has taken place.

Lizzie also campaigns publicly against sexism, misogyny and police-perpetrated domestic abuse (PPDA) in police forces.

Media experience

Lizzie has spoken to national broadcast media, including Channel 4 News, about her own experience of inappropriate behaviour within policing and about wider concerns over how such complaints are handled. She wants to see cultural change within the police service.

Lizzie speaks and writes publicly on leadership, parenting, caring responsibilities and workplace culture, including support for parents of neurodivergent children. She regularly shares her views on why women may tolerate inappropriate workplace behaviour, and on the conditions that allow this to happen.

She is an active spokesperson for the Kent and Medway VRU’s public health approach to violence reduction, and for the Safer Knife Replacement Scheme, which has attracted national interest.

Contact details

For spokesperson requests and press enquiries relating to Chief Inspector Lizzie Jones, please contact:

Website: kentandmedwayvru.co.uk