Merry Christmas, Santa and the Junior PCSOs

Well this will be the last blog before Christmas. Last Sunday PC Jeanette Denton and PC Sharon Conway attended St Marys Church for the Christmas Service and PCSO David Wright presented one of the readings.

Some of you may have seen the Sunday people newspaper last weekend, where there was a double page spread about the Night Time Economy in Southampton. From doing my nights weekend the weekend before the article, I can confirm it is a very realistic account of a Friday/Saturday night in the centre of town.

We held our Junior PCSO Christmas party last week at Kingsland Community centre. It was a really good evening, with about 25 children attending. Several parents supported us as well. PCSO Ken Payne who used to be part of the team, came over from the Isle of Wight to be santa to the children, and only one of them recognised him!

The Policing Pledge has been advertised again, as you may have seen and heard on the TV and radio. This has provided us with further guidance on the content and layout of the community newsletters we send out, and also confirmation that we need to have monthly community priority setting meetings for each beat. I have sent out Decembers community newsletters for Northam and St Marys by email. If you are not on the email list and would like to be added, please let me know. The next community priority setting meetings are planned for Northam on 4 January, 6pm at the NTRA office, and St Marys on 9 February, 6pm at Central Halls, St Mary St. Please come along to raise and discuss your concerns and issues.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and thanks for reading the blog

Cheers

Dick

PC Rain and the mounted horses!

Hello,

It was my turn for the nights weekend again covering the night time economy in the City Centre of Southampton so I thought I would let you know how it went! Friday night was wet - which is always helpful - PC Rain is our best friend when the pubs and clubs close! I had a good number of officers on duty - we were joined by two specials from the New Milton who were looking for a change of experience. They both thanked us for letting them come onto the operation - in fact we are more grateful to them for adding to our officer numbers.

I visited all the venues, and they reported that customer numbers are quite low - a sign of the economic times I guess. And spooky - the owner of the Aqua Lounge told me she had recently read my blog!! A couple of pubs closed before midnight and the roadworks in Above Bar St sparked some confusion - how do we get from the Square to Flares??. Don't bother we reply - go home please! By half past midnight we had 2 arrests - both for possession of drugs, both separate locations. One person was ordered to leave the city centre and was issued a dispersal order under Section 27 of the Violent Crime Act - a really good bit of legislation.

At 2am it got busier again as more pubs closed. A few scuffles were reported, and then a fight in the park off of Poundtree Rd. We arrested one person. Another was arrested for drugs - this time with loads of tablets and was arrested for possession with intent to supply, which meant officers were sent to search their house. The cells at Southampton quickly filled up and prisoners had to be sent to Lyndhurst and Fareham custody suites.

As the pubs/clubs closed lots of young 'ladies' were walking down the streets without shoes/coats - the street pastors came to the rescue with flip flops, survival blankets and far more patience than me! The pastors do a fantastic job, picking up the vulnerable and those just wanting to talk. At 3.30am the streets began clearing as people went home. I headed back to the station to add up how many prisoners we had and where they were, sorted out any statements that were needed, and looked at what work was still outstanding. Fortunately there were only 4 prisoners directly related to the night time economy operation, the others had come from normal policing. At 6.30am I was still checking the files – before a quick look at the news to see England had a favourable draw for the World Cup. Couldn’t find out who won 'I am a Celebrity' though!.

Saturday night and PC Rain was here again! We also had 2 horses from Avon and Somerset to assist, which was fun. We had more officers on the operation than I have ever had - over 30 officers…..brilliant.

Out on the street, there were a lot more people than Friday. Mostly good natured, but there were a few scuffles. Just after midnight there was an assault - head butt - outside KFC. Blood everywhere. A few minutes later the offender returned and we ended up with a chase around Above Bar St. The horses come down to assist - what a sight that was - two huge horses bounding down the street! Mind you, no-one got in the way!! The offender took off his jumper, but we still got him and he was sent to the cells. Next we had reports of a chap who had swallowed a load of pills in the park. Finally we locate him and the paramedic says he needs to go to hospital. Next was an arrest for a man possessing Class A drugs. At almost the same time a unit checks a man for being a nuisance and found that he was subject of a Section 27 dispersal earlier in the evening – he was arrested as well for breaching the dispersal order. His mate was disorderly, by telling the mounted officers to 'get a real job', not a sensible move when that mounted officer was on a huge horse!! He was given a penalty notice order for £80, which he decided to rip up, was abusive again, and ended up being arrested himself. An assault was next, the offender was identified and arrested. Another arrest for yet another fight, his mate decided to try to stop the police arresting his mate - so he came in too. Finally the last clubs closed as the rain came in again. A busy and eventful night. The officers who had to take their prisoners to Eastleigh finally got back and joined the others who were preparing so that days could deal with the prisoners. I headed off at 0630hrs to get a few hours kip before putting up the Xmas tree for ‘er indoors! Another weekend gone!

Dick

The Policing Pledge

Well after the excitement of Twickenham, we are back to our routine job again. The tag rugby sessions are continuing and we are looking at progressing the project with the RFU to include youth clubs and will be aiming to have holiday sessions next year, which will be called the Southampton Street Rugby Project.

An interesting point this week is the latest media release of details of the Policing Pledge. I am confident that the Safer Neighbourhood Team covering Northam and St Marys meets the pledge, with the only exception being the monthly meeting in St Marys. There appears to be some discussion as to what the Pledge means about monthly contact/meetings to identify and set community priorities. Being a simple soul, I take it as a meeting the Police would hold in each area, once a month where the public are invited to come along and discuss their issues, identify the top three and then the Police, with other agencies, will tell you what we intend to do about them. Next month, we update the community and go through the same thing again. This happens in Northam where we attend the Northam Tenants and Residents Association meeting one month where we have a police slot, and then hold a public police meeting the next month. It seems to work quite well, and although not a lot of people turn up, we can only work with those that do attend. Councillor Stephen Barnes-Andrews and SCC Housing officer Adam Cresser kindly come along to the monthly meetings and can take away any issues that apply to them. Once it’s all clarified we will introduce something similar to St Marys. Regarding the rest of the pledge - we are complying already.

You may remember the time capsule that the Junior PCSO schemes were doing for Black History Month. Well last week a bus-load of the juniors went to a 'secret location' and buried the time capsule. It will be recovered in 5 years time. The children really enjoyed themselves identifying their black heroes and it will be interesting to see what they all think of their current thoughts in 2014.

This week PC Jeanette Denton completed another Op Stop in St Mary St, this time issuing two fixed penalty notices for no seat belts. Unfortunately the operation was curtailed a bit when there was an accident in the area and all the officers went off to deal with that.

Finally, the Constabulary are recruiting again and are fast-tracking PCSOs. This is great for the PCSOs, however all of mine, bar one, are applying. I wish them all the very best, but hope they are not all successful otherwise I will be losing a great team!!

Cheers

Dick

Swing low sweet……

What a day at Twickenham on Saturday. I am not really one to exaggerate, but it was awesome. The day went really well, and the 12 children form St Marys Primary and 10 children from Mount Pleasant really behaved themselves well and were a credit to their schools. Although it is arguable who enjoyed themselves the most - children or adults. The first good thing was that everyone turned up!! When we got to Twickenham we had a tour of the Rugby Museum and shops, then off to the changing rooms - just down the corridor from the England and Argentina dressing rooms. As we were going to do the guard of honour for when the teams came on to the pitch, we had a few practices of that - then on to the pitch. What a stadium, gasps from the kids, awesome, there were some of the team practicing on the pitch, particularly Jonny Wilkinson with his kicking. We went to the far side of the pitch where there were two tag pitches marked out, split the children into two teams from each school and played on the hallowed turf. Then swapped the teams around so both St Marys teams played both Mount Pleasant teams. There were several thousand spectators watching, the games were filmed and shown on the huge screens. Truly awesome. The children played really well and responded perfectly to their surroundings. The announcer had been telling everyone about our project and when the games finished and we started to make our way back to the changing rooms, the crowd were applauding, awesome. On the way back the President of the RFU - an ex-senior officer in the Police came to see us and shook everyone's hand. Then back to the changing rooms and some lunch, and all of a sudden it was 2.25pm - out for the Guard of Honour. Now the stadium was packed with 80,000 people, cheering and the place was buzzing - yes awesome. We stood there as the teams thundered out, the England team accompanied by tremendous flame throwers. The national Anthems were bellowed out - and that was our bit done. Back to the changing rooms, put on warm clothing and off to our places in the stands - front row no less - to watch the game. Fortunately England won - although not a convincing victory - and the try was scored right in front of us. All in all it was a fantastic day, enjoyed by everyone with loads of photos, videos and memories.

Well, back to real Police work for last week!! We had Holyrood tenants and Residents meeting last Monday which went well for us with no burning issues. Wednesday was the CTCG (Community Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group) meeting, which is a multi agency meeting covering the whole of the central area where we discuss the various concerns and troublesome people involved in anti - social behaviour. Thursday evening was the City Reach AGM which I missed due to training, but two of the team went.

This week we have the Northam patch chat on Wednesday and the Kingsland patch chat on Thursday. We also have the Council of Faiths Conference at the Vedic Temple in Radcliffe Rd on Thursday. I understand the Chief Constable is attending. On Friday we also have another meeting about the move to the new police station in Southern Rd which is going up quite quickly now. On top of all that we have our core work of the four junior PCSO schemes and of course now the tag rugby at St Marys school. To add even more woes to the team, we are introducing a new recording system for Neighbourhood teams called Safety Net, and the team are getting trained on that. We are going live with the system and it is also used by agencies so we can all add what we are doing about problems on one system.

Well, all the above is without actually dealing with any crime yet - and so I have been allocating crimes to the team to deal with as well. It certainly keeps us busy - but then that’s what we are paid for. That’s it for now… Swing low, sweet…………...

Twickenham here we come!

Hello,

Well that’s Halloween and Bonfire Night out of the way. We had extra patrols out for the week, and completed joint patrols with Hampshire Fire and Rescue, Neighbourhood Wardens and City patrol. However, everything went off very quietly. There were very few incidents reported to us, although we dealt with some students setting off fireworks one night in Hoglands park and some youngsters having a camp fire in the copse of St Marys School playing field. Overall though, it went very well.

The big event this week of course is our trip to Twickenham with the tag rugby children from St Marys and Mt Pleasant schools. We have been completing two tag sessions a week to try to get them up to scratch - will have to see what happens come Saturday! The children are really enjoying themselves with the rugby although funnily enough I saw one of the Asian parents I know at the last session on Thursday and he said 'You will never have the Asian children playing rugby!!' - well come and have a look. We have children from various ethnic backgrounds taking part, their choice not ours, boys and girls, and yes - some are Asian. I do not think any of them had heard of Twickenham before last week but it will be a really good experience for all of us and after England lost to Australia at the weekend, we can hope for a win on Saturday.

We had the Police Public meeting at Northam last week and there were a distinct lack of problems identified, which was great. Drugs were raised again, some drug dealing from the foyer of Princes House, with users driving or walking in to Princes Court car park to collect the drugs. So we will ensure that area is patrolled more and try to gain more information. The traffic enforcement of the no left turn from Princes St into Northam Rd was kept as a priority. PC Dave Houghton has monitored that in the last week again and issued another two tickets. Other than that there were no other problems for us. The residents are happy that juvenile nuisance has continued to reduce, and decided to drop that as a priority - that’s about the first time for 10-years!!

This Monday evening is the Holyrood Residents and Tenants Group. Part of the meeting will be discussing the neighbourhood Charter. This is a document where each agency agree a level of service to the Estate. Police-wise, this is basically the Policing Pledge.

Finally, my new Inspector starts this week - Insp Doug Ashman joins us from HQ where he was staff officer to ACC Nicholson. Insp Ashman wasted no time in getting onto the streets and went out yesterday afternoon with PC Denton and a few others to St Mary St, where she has been arranging operations to target speeders, and issue tickets for any offences that are identified out there.

Finally, I have been looking through the statistics and am pleased to report that reported crime is still reducing in comparison to last year. I particularly look at Criminal damage, Vehicle crime and burglary as these offences directly affect the community. The figures are:
Vehicle crime: St Marys Oct 2008 -8.7 p/month, Oct 2009 - 7.3 p/month,
Northam Oct 2008 - 13.1 p/month Oct 2009 5.6 p/month
Damage : St Marys Oct 2008 - 16.8 p/month, Oct 2009 - 14.4 p/month,
Northam Oct 2008 - 14/9 p/month Oct 2009 9.4 p/month
Burglary : St Marys Oct 2008 - 8.2 p/month, Oct 2009 - 5.1 p/month,
Northam Oct 2008 - 7 p/month, Oct 2009 - 4.8 p/month

Long may it continue!

Cheers

Dick

Leave, Junior PCSOs and Halloween

Hello,

Well I was fortunate to have some leave from last Friday until Thursday. A very nice break down to North Devon where I did a bit more of the South West Coastal path, had a few cream teas and sampled some Devon Ale, and of course a pint or two of cloudy scrumpy. Back to work now though.

Thursday was a good day. We took 20 of the Junior PCSO to Fairthorne Manor YMCA activity centre for the day. It was really good and the children behaved themselves - well most of them. The weather held out and children completed a team challenge, obstacle course and some rock climbing. We took the 20 children with the best attendance at the schemes. We were accompanied by a film crew from CASS productions who are making a film about the Junior PCSO Schemes, funding has been supplied by Swaythling Housing who have supported the schemes and been involved from the very start in 2007. This was the third day of filming. On Tuesday they filmed, amongst other things, a group of Junior PCSOs visiting St Marys fire station and on Wednesday we had a series of activities that the juniors often do, to be shown on the film. We were also very lucky that the Chief Constable came down to see the schemes and was interviewed by some of the children. We are looking forward to reviewing the footage and making sure we get the right pieces in the final film.

We have been busy in St Mary St again. PC Jeanette Denton attended the St Mary's Traders Association meeting on Monday - no major issues raised for us. At the meeting she was able to mention the traffic enforcement we have been doing following complaints of speeding in the street. The initiative involves a group of officers stopping cars, advising the drivers about the speed limit in St Marys Street and identifying and dealing with any offences that are disclosed. Each operation lasted about 1hour. This is the third, and each time we end up with about 8/9 fixed penalty tickets, mainly for not wearing seat belts. This has gone down really well with residents and the traders and we will be continuing the operations.

On Monday we have the open police meeting at Northam. This will be in the Residents association office at 6pm. The idea is that we will gather the concerns of the community and identify the top three which we will then work on for the next few months. There will be two of these meetings a year. We will also have four meetings a year where residents and agencies will identify three community priorities and what we are all going to do to try to sort out the problems.

This weekend was Halloween and we’re now leading up to Bonfire night. Traditionally this is a busy time for the police, with lots of reports of anti-social behaviour. We are quite fortunate in that we do not suffer from too much juvenile nuisance, however we have allocated officers to patrols each evening, to respond to any calls and to intervene with any youngsters we see about. This should also give reassurance to the residents. We distributed plenty of the 'No trick or treat here please' posters to help those who don’t want to be disturbed by the youngsters.

Dick

The Politics show, Junior PCSOs and Rugby at Twickenham!

We had some national publicity over the weekend. You may have seen the politics show on Sunday 18 October which featured the Junior PCSOs from Chapel and Deanery doing their time capsule for Black History Month. This year’s theme for BHM is black heroes. The Junior PCSOs, under the guidance of PCSO Kelly Drodge and Swaythling Housing Community Officer Jade Missen (one of my ex-PCSO) have identified their black heroes, prepared some facts about them, and then all the heroes were placed in a large tube (capsule) which will be hidden at a secret location and opened in 2014. The programme featured a short interview with Kelly which was great.

This week we are involved with 'Bike safe' week. This is all about safety for two wheeled road users, and will be concentrating on cycle safety, particularly during the commuter times. I was asked to pop down to Twiggs Lane on the Marchwood by-pass and did a bit with Radio Solent - so I hope that came across OK. Twiggs Lane was chosen as the programme featured a man who lost his best friend to a motor cycle accident at that junction last year. I spoke a bit about cycle safety in the St Marys area, particularly with the children going to and from school.

Talking about St Marys and road safety - PC Jeanette Denton has held two vehicle operations on St Mary St. Primarily these operations were to reduce speeding as we have had several complaints, but the results have been numerous fixed penalty tickets for people not wearing seat belts. We are getting about eight tickets an hour. Jeanette will continue the operations and there has been some really positive feedback and support from the community who have spoken to the officers during the operations. So far we have issued 17 tickets and loads of advice.

In my previous blog I mentioned the tag rugby we are looking at delivering in St Marys school. Well, Nicola Vaughan of Hampshire RFU came down last week and trained 12 of us in tag. We are going to call the scheme the Southampton Street Rugby Project. On Tuesday, PCSO Kelly Drodge and I started tag at St Marys and on Friday PCSO James Morgan started at Mount Pleasant School. These are after school clubs, so will help to reduce youth anti social behaviour after school and also help us get to know the kids better. A fantastic bonus though is that Hampshire RFU have won the bid for the 'curtain raiser' (pre match activity) at Twickenham for the England v Argentina game on Novemeber 14th. We will hopefully be taking 24 children up to Twickenham to play tag rugby on the hallowed turf prior to the international. What a fantastic opportunity and, and one of the main organisers for the scheme, I will be going and am looking forward to it.

The meetings and beat surgeries are still coming in thick and fast. On 2 November we will have the next Northam open police public meeting to identify the community priorities. This week we have the bike safe event on Northam Rd on Wednesday morning with the council, Thursday I have the Northam 521/ CityReach youth project meeting followed by the Chapel residents meeting then next Monday is the St Marys Traders Association meeting.

And finally, you may have been aware that last Saturday was the Hindu festival of Diwali. This is the busiest night of the year at the Vedic Temple in Radcliffe Rd, where hundreds of people attend the temple and the fireworks display. I went down with four of my team to help keep the traffic flowing and assist where needed. The traffic is the main problem, with so many cars coming to Radcliffe Rd. The temple had arranged to use the Mt Pleasant Trading Estate for some parking, and whilst we ignored some of the double yellow lines, we prevented any large obstructions and kept the traffic moving, with plenty of understanding from both the Temple visitors and residents.

Well, that’s it till next time

Cheers

Dick

Busy week!

Sorry for the lateness of this post - it's been a hectic couple of weeks!

It was my nights weekend a couple of weeks ago and Friday’s seem to have been a bit quieter just recently – but the Saturday was one of the busiest for some time. All went well until about midnight when we started getting fights breaking out throughout the city centre, then about 2am Sunday morning we had to arrest a few people, which means less officers on the streets, and that gets tougher then. One of our best tools is a piece of legislation known as a Section 27 dispersal. It gives us the power to demand that a person leaves the immediate area, and we define that as the city centre for up to 48 hrs. This saves us arresting people for petty skirmishes and nuisance that is alcohol related, but still gets rid of the problem. On the Saturday night we did 17 dispersals which helped a lot.

You may be aware that anti social behaviour on St Marys school playing fields is one of the community priorities for St Marys. Regular patrols have reduced the reports and recently PCSO Kelly Drodge caught two youngsters having a small fire in the grounds. They were spoken to, and in fact referred to Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service who run a course for youths who may be potential fire setters. Kelly also arranged for the boys to spend a few hours cleaning up the fields, litter picking etc, and in fact they brought along a couple friends, so there was a really good clean up. They did a good job and staff at the school are really pleased. We’ve done a few “clean up the mess you made” sessions with kids now and they seem to work very well.

A couple of Sundays ago we were invited to an evening at the Fellowship Dialogue Society, which is a Turkish community group in Augustine Rd. Several of us went along, had a lovely Turkish meal - like being on holiday! Learned about the Society and informed others of what we are doing in the community. I was asked to give a presentation about the Safer Neighbourhood Team, and at least everyone stayed awake! I was honoured to be on the same table as Alan Whitehead MP and Councillor Sarah Bogle. There were several other councillors and members of the community present, in all a very pleasant evening. We hope that the Society will add to the many agencies and groups that help keep the area stable.

Meetings are still coming in thick and fast – I recently had a meeting at St Marys School to talk to the new Acting Head teacher, Jane Waddup about our involvement at the school. Obviously we discussed the problems regarding the playing fields and we talked about things like future police surgeries at the school (which went down well last term), a knife awareness presentation (went really well last year and included the metal detectors and 'wanding' the children into school), and about doing some road safety and seat belt enforcement on the way to and from school. From there I went to one of the elderly warden controlled housing schemes where they have been having a few problems between some residents. I was there with their housing officers and -well - I have never heard and seen so much swearing and aggressive behaviour from 'old folk' in my life. It was like a room of Alf Garnets!! The “meeting” for the want of a better word, went on for about 3 hours. Hopefully we found a way forward, we will be keeping in touch and the PCSOs will be visiting.

I have a meeting with Hampshire RFU coming up to look at the possibility of setting up a street rugby programme. This is along the lines of Tag Rugby, which is handy as we have just purchased some tag rugby kit! Looking forward to getting that one up and running. We have also arranged two weeks of patrols every evening in the parks now that the students have come back - partly to explain safety advice to them, but also to remind them about the impact of anti social behaviour.

And finally, good bye to PC Phil Warwick who is leaving Northam today and moves to Eastleigh. Good luck Phil.

That’s is for now

Dick

Northam Community Priorities changed...

Hello,

After the fun of the summer holidays it's back to school for the children and normal business resumed for us. Actually, our statistics show that reports of criminal damage and vehicle crime in Northam and St Marys dropped in August. This is great news for us, now we have to try to keep those figures down.

On Monday, September 7, we had the second Northam police and public meeting where we identify and discuss the problems in the community and come up with the three community priorities. It was agreed that the prostitution problem and the drug issues have been reduced over the last two months to such an extent that these priorities were removed. A major factor was considered to be the joint visits made by the police and housing staff together to a few 'problem' addresses. It was decided to retain youth nuisance as a priority, but only just. The two new concerns that were raised, and agreed as priorities, were people ignoring the no left turn from Princes Street onto Northam and vehicle crime, particularly breaking into taxis. The no left turn issue has been raised before, and there have been improvements to the crossing, however, as often, the problem is returning. We will get out there with our fixed penalty notices and get some enforcement done. Vehicle crime is relatively low in Northam, however there have been some taxis targeted recently. We will check vehicles for items left on display, and if there are we will inform the owners either by letter by calling at the address. We have asked the council licensing department for taxis to remind all companies about leaving items on display.

Another meeting was an update on the football cage in James Street, which we can hopefully relocate to St Marys school field. We have an agreement in principle and there are now a variety of people trying to move this forward. Another meeting I have just found out about is the St Marys Traders Association which is getting going again. We will attend the meetings and support this group.

The Junior PCSO schemes are starting up again this week, so plenty to keep the PCSOs busy. We have gained some funding to take 20 of them to Fairthorne Manor in October so are busy planning for that. The PCSOs are also busy organising the police surgeries for City College and the Halls of Residence. We hold surgeries during the first weeks that students come in to help educate them about personal safety and to remind them that they can actually be quite a nuisance with their behaviour, particularly in the evening when they have been up to town.

Some good news is that the drugs issues in Kingsland seem to be reducing. We have been spending a lot of time patrolling estate and I spoke to several residents today who said there are less users and dealers around. So we will keep patrolling and hopefully move them on.

Other than that it's not too bad, unless you know different, and if you do, please let us know

Cheers

Dick

Looking good for the summer

Hello,

Well Friday was the last day of the summer activities that we have been working on with 'Saints in the Community'. I went down there with one of our media team - Gaetana - so that she could do some publicity for our constabulary newspaper 'Frontline'. Gaetana, whose last day it was before she moves to a new role at headquarters, and has been really good for the few months she was with us, was really impressed with the children and what was happening.

There were over 60 children doing 'mini-olympics' on Friday. As usual we had two PCSOs - David Wright and Dan Morant - down there, and also two police staff completing their ASB day. As luck would have it, the prizegiving which was supposed to be on Saturday, was brought forward to Friday. This was because we had two Saints players doing the presentation. It was really good to have Dean Hammond and Neil Trotman presenting the trophies to the children. This year we had over 200 children register for the activities with about 50-60 turning up each day. Friday was the final tournament and BBQ.

Staffwise, I have PC Sharon Conway starting next week for St Marys. However now we are back to full strength, I now find that PC Phil Warwick will be moving to Eastleigh in October so we will have a vacancy in Northam. The hunt will be on for a replacement! PCSO Fiona Oates only has two duties left, and her replacement will be on the next PCSO course which starts in November. Finally, Wednesday will be the last day for my Inspector, Chris Kirby. He is retiring after 30 years service and I wish him all the best and thank him for all the support he has given me and team over the last 7 years that I have worked with him. Good luck Chris.

We had the Kingsland Patch Chat on Tuesday and unfortunately drug dealing has raised its ugly head in the area again, particulary around the rear of the Community Centre, the underpass and the railway footbridge on North Front. We are lucky now that there are plenty of residents who are willing to tell us when things are happening, and therefore able to respond to them quicker. PC Caroline Woodfield will take the lead on the problem and is preparing an action plan and we will be completing some operations to try and reduce the problem again. Drug dealing is so fluid nowadays, with dealers and users making arrangements by mobile phone they can change areas very quickly. Hopefully we will move them, or if we are lucky we may even be able to catch some. Otherwise evryone was happy policewise. It was pleasing to hear comments that the summer has been quiet regarding youth nuisance - something to do with the summer activity programme, amongst other things, I hope.

Today is the Golden Grove patch chat so we can wait and see how the summer has been over there. Other meetings next week will be the Albion Towers Reidents Group and the Kingsland residents group. It all sounds like 'power to the people'.

On with the Chief Constable's Anti Social Behaviour campaign and we have had some of the police staff from the station delivering the monthly newsletters around Northam and St Marys for us. They were going to get some questionnaires done as well but ran out of time. The staff were actually some of our analysts, who wade through all the information and statistics that are generated to provide reports on what crime is happening where and when etc, so it was interesting for them to go out the streets and areas that they complete the reports on. We have more staff planned for helping us as part of this campaign up until the end of September.

One final thing that we have been doing over the summer is that all the team have had a one day attachment with Hampshire Fire and Rescue service,based at St Marys. Some have been lucky, or unlucky which way you look at it, to go out on calls with the tenders and others have had to put up with a days training if no calls. We will be planning to host the firefighters with us soon. This will hopefully improve the understanding of each others roles and help at incidents.

Well, that’s it for now.

Cheers

Dick

Hello,

It's another busy week with the summer activities programme arranged with Saints in the Community. Activities including football, tag-rugby, streetdance, cricket, music and more have been going ahead and most days over 50 children are involved. It has been going really well, and luckily the weather has been OK to hold the events outside.

An interesting item this week was the Hampshire Constabulary firearms presentation called FAKE - Firearms and Knife Education. This went down really well with the children and is an excellent presenation in the current climate. You may have heard of the chief constable's anti-social behaviour initiative over the summer. Well as part of the initiative we have had quite a few staff from headquarters coming down to assist with the activities as well. It's good for them to get out of their offices, and good for us because we can show off our community work to our the constabulary colleagues.

As part of the ASB campaign we organisied another Hoglands Gazebo event for Thursday and three members of police staff from different areas of the county came to help. As usual with the events, we were talking to park users about crime awareness and prevention, mobile and bike security marking and generally offering advice. We think this works towards reducing crime in Hoglands Park and again this year we have not had too much crime reported - the summer used to be horrendous.

Have any of you seen the stadium footbridge from Northam Road to St Mary's stadium in the last week or two? The street art project is going really welll and the artists are doing a fantastic job smartening up the bridge. Again, this is part of the summer activities programme and the children initally canvassed for ideas and came up with the plans. It will still take a couple of weeks to finish but is looking pretty impressive already. I just hope nobody spoils it before we get the anti-graffiti paint on. Thanks to everyone involved.

PC Phil Warwick has been out and about in the Peel Street area with council highways staff regarding the obstructions caused by some of the vehicles in the area. Unfortunately some businesses are blocking areas for others and there have been a few complaints - again a case of too many vehicles and not enough space. Hopefully the council are looking at putting in a few double yellow lines on the corners to help reduce the problem.

We are now busy planning the Junior PCSO events for the coming term. There are four schemes now - Lumpy Lane, Deanery, Chapel and Holyrood. It takes the PCSOs quite a bit of time putting their programmes together and we have a few visits arranged. We are planning to so something with Swaythling Housing Association to celebrate Black History Month in October and have some funding to take 20 of the juniors to Fairthorne Manor for a day of activities. We have been approached by Thames Valley Police, the Met and Sussex Police about the Junior PCSO schemes and some of their areas are looking at introducing them.

Of course next month the students return, so we are also planning a variety of operations and events to 'educate' students both about being a victim of crime and being involved in crime. There is naturally a lot of anti-social behaviour reported when the new students come in - first time away from Mum and Dad etc and that is particularly prevelant on the Deanery to Chapel footbridge. We will have a few weekend alcohol confiscation operations there. The students also fall victims to crime, staying out late, walking home by themselves after drinking, rooms full of laptops etc. so there is an education and crime awareness side to the operations. We will have stalls at the Freshers Fairs and have police surgeries at the halls of residences and City College to offer advice.

Plenty to keep us going! See you soon,

Dick

Back!

Back again,

I am back from my three weeks' leave so time for an update. As you are asking - yes very nice leave thanks, five days in Scotland and went up Ben Nevis, then two weeks in Canada visiting my son and his family. Great fun with the three grandchildren. I mentioned about the blog and my daughter-in-laws comment was to tell me to stop introducing the blog as 'Hello again' and try something different, hence I used back again at the start of this one. But at least I can confirm that the blog is being read as far away as Canada!

Well I came back to the expected 350+ emails and time to catch up on the crimes for the patch. Vehicle crime has increased slightly - up to 20 for the rolling month for Northam, Newtown and St Marys. A few months ago we went up to 50+ for the rolling month, so we are looking at what we can do to reduce the figures again. There was one recently at Northam Community Centre, where the improved CCTV showed it's worth when there was evidence on the CCTV system, so hopefully this will further help reduce incidents around the community centre.

We are into the school summer holidays, and as yet no increase in reports of anti-social behaviour on the patch. This is in line with recent holiday periods for us, and as with last year we have the summer activities running daily at St Marys School field with Jazz Bhatti and the Saints in the Community. The programme is even bigger than last year with activities from 10am to 3pm. Just hope for decent weather! Activities include football, tag rugby, dance, arts and craft, basketball and plenty of others.

For those of you who use the footbridge from Northam Road to the stadium you will also notice that the painting we started last year is getting finished this year. We got as far as the Saints stripes last year, but this time have everything in place to complete the rest of the bridge. The local youngsters have canvassed residents and bridge users to see what they wanted on the bridge. The results are Saints related stuff at that end of the bridge and Southampton history at the Northam Rd end. The youth leaders from Baseline and City Reach have been overseeing the project and painting has started. It should look really good.

As mentioned on the last blog, PC Steve Mckenzie has moved on the City centre Unit and his replacement has been identified as PC Sharon Conway from Bitterne and she joins us on 3 September. We welcome Sharon and she will be out and about in St Marys as soon as she arrives. PCSO Fiona Oates has resigned, to go to University, so she will be leaving in September and I have to ask for a replacement. Finally, and probably most importantly, my Inspector - Chris Kirby, is leaving after over 30 years service, so it will be a change above as well. It never stands still here.

As ever there were meetings during my first week back. I had the Community Tasking and Co-ordinating Group and the Northam Patch Chat. No great new issues at either meeting. I have had a reminder from a resident in St Marys about cyclists on the pavement again, so will get the PCSOs to up the enforcement again. Other than that, touch wood, things are not too bad - unless you know different, and if you do, please let me know!

Cheers

Dick

New priorities for Northam

Hello again,

Well no sooner had I explained the Northam community priorities, than they were changed at the public meeting that evening! Although not a lot of people attended, there were enough for a good discussion. Thanks to Councillor Stephen Barnes-Andrews and Adam Cresser from Housing who were also present.

At the meeting, people mentioned their concerns and we wrote them on the flip chart but did not discuss them until we had all the concerns. Once we had the concerns, we discussed each one and finally everyone came up and identified the concern that they most wanted dealt with.

The priorities we ended up with were:

1. Youth Nuisance, particularly in Northam precinct when the IT club is in session. It's ironic really, but the IT club is so successful that there are more children attending than can get on the computers. So while they are waiting they tend to play football in the precinct, and this is the main concern.

2. Drug issues - no specific details but there is the feeling that dealing and drug related litter is on the increase again. So we will be looking at the normal places - stairwells, shed areas etc and checking out the usual faces aswell!

3. There was a draw for the third concern - between prostitute activity and dog fouling. A show of hands made prostitution the third and final community priority. Therefore dog fouling and the other concern, drinkers in the precinct, will remain concerns, but not priorities.

Everyone said they found the meeting useful. Next month it will be part of the Northam Tenants and Residents Association meeting on 3 August, with a specific police meeting for 7 September.

We are heavily into the planning of the summer activities now. Again we are working with Jazz Bhatti and the Saints in the Community to deliver five weeks of daily activities for youngsters in the city centre. Last year we had over 90 children signed up. This year is bigger with the youth clubs, Southampton City Council Sports Department, Baseline, Solent University, Hampshire Cricket, Swaythling Housing, Kick Start, Hampshire Football Association and others involved. We will provide at least two officers each day to assist, and this will also help break down barriers between us and the children. All my PCSOs are getting trained in multi-sports to help present the activities. All we need now is some decent weather! The first week's activities will be at Newtown Youth Centre and then we will be at St Marys School Playing Fields.

At the moment I send out community newsletters, alternating months between St Mary's and Northam. I have been giving some thought as to whether to combine the two newsletters, and send out a monthly newsletter to cover the whole patch of Northam and St Mary's. If you have any views on this please let me know.

Well this is the last week for PC Steve McKenzie with my team. He starts with the Town Centre Unit on Monday. He will be missed he has done a great job for the 3 years or so that he has been in the team. Now the hunt is on to try to find a replacement. PC Jeanette Denton is finding her way around so there has been a bit of a change in St Marys.

You may have heard about the Chief Constable's focus on anti-social behaviour (ASB) for the next three months. We have been looking at what we can do. Of course the summer activities with Saints are a huge commitment that we do anyway, and next week we will have our gazebo in Hoglands Park for a few afternoons to do some bike and mobile security marking, crime prevention and reassurance to park users. We used to get a lot of thefts and assaults during school holidays, and have found the gazebo events useful in making people aware of the problems.

The chief's ASB focus involves extra evening patrols and working with youth offending team and youth services. We are fortunate at the moment not to suffer very much from youth nuisance, so have let Portswood take our days as they have their Section 30 Dispersal Orders in Burgess Road and Mansbridge - so their need is greater than ours. We do have an operation planned though to use some of the non front line officers from HQ and training. We have a day planned which PC Phil Warwick will lead, and will concentrate on the community priorities for Northam and St Marys.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I am on leave for the next three weeks, so unfortunately there may not be any updates but I am trying to persuade my colleagues, Sergeant Andrew Williams for Newtown and Sergeant Richard McWilliam for the Polygon and Waterfront to put a bit in as a change. I will keep twisting their arms - otherwise - see you in 3 weeks time.

Hello again,

What wonderful weather last week! My BBQ has been getting plenty of use this week although my neighbours find it a bit strange if I have been on nights!

Back to work, and tonight, Monday, July 6, we have the first of the monthly police meetings trial for Northam. This is to meet the policing pledge of monthly meetings. We will meet at the residents' office for 6pm. Everyone that lives or works in Northam is invited to share their concerns, and we will see what we can do about them, and agree the priorities. Every alternate month the priority setting will be part of the residents meetings. It will be interesting to see how many people turn up and if the concerns are still the same. This week I will provide a short update on the priorities, what they are and what we have done and intend to do.

For Northam we have the priorities of juvenile nuisance problem, parking problems on Northam estate and drinkers in the precinct.

Regarding the juvenile nuisance, this has reduced considerably over the past year or so. We started, and continue, the Junior PCSO scheme for Lumpy Lane which has gone really well, and as I have mentioned before has spread to other areas of Hampshire and even Thames Valley Police - so a first for us there. We work really closely with Sally White at the Northam 521 Youth Group and assisted in the funding of CCTV at the Community Centre. PCSO Mark Reynolds has also arranged for some of the children we identified as causing damage and graffiti to go back and clean it off - that’s gone down well. He has also assisted the businesses in Radcliffe Court to get the area fenced and gated, again reducing damage.

For the parking problems, PC Phil Warwick has arranged for some businesses to use the council car park at Bond Street for reduced rates, therefore freeing up space in York Close for residents. There is great concern over the number of taxis parking on the estate, however we have spoken to the council and there is nothing in their licence for taxis that prevents this, as many are privately owned cars that are used for taxis, so we may be as far as we can get on that. Its just a fact that there are too few spaces.

Finally the drinkers on the precinct. We patrol everyday and have moved on several people, (many actually residents of the estate), confiscated alcohol and keep pressing the message. The drinkers that live on the estate received a joint visit from us and housing to remind them of their responsibilities under their tenancy agreement, and that seems to have helped as well, so that is reducing.

For St Marys the priorities we have are anti-social behaviour (ASB) on the footbridge from Chapel to Deanery, cycling on the pavements and drug issues in Holyrood.

The ASB on the footbridge has been identified as students going to and from the City Centre. We have had some operations overnight where we stop check the students and take alcohol on their way into town, and lots of liaison with the Halls of Residences. In fact PCSO Mike Kesslar-Lyne now has surgeries at each hall when the students come back from holidays. There was the clean up day at the bridge with the Junior PCSO schemes and residents and there is the paint fest planned with students - so an improvement.

Cycling on the pavement - as a cyclist myself, this really annoys me. It is an offence, and people know that, but they will belt down pavements, dodging between pedestrians. We have issued 37 fixed penalty notices for cycling on the pavement this year and at £30 a time I make that about £1,110 - not bad. The PCSO will continue to enforce the regulations and PCSO David Wright has visited City College on several occasions to try to get the message across to students as they were identified as particularly at fault.

Finally the drugs issues at Holyrood. There have been a few warrants completed on the estate this year and we keep a good liaison going with the staff and clients at the Drug Intervention Project on College St. The neighbourhood wardens and ourselves regularly check the shed areas on Holyrood for drug litter, and thankfully this is reducing.

On top of the priorities, we also identify community concerns and the sort of things the team are working on for these concerns are: parking problems in Golden Grove, thefts and assaults in Hoglands Park, speeding in St Mary Street, rough sleepers/begging in St Mary Street and behind Corals, neighbour disputes in Charliejoy Gardens, Northam and the drug issues in Northam. So plenty to keep us busy.

Incidentally, do you know how Charliejoy gardens got its name? Well many years ago, the St Marys vicars residence was next to the Augustine Church on Northam Rd and had a large garden. Part of the garden was sold off for housing and at the time the vicars name was Charlie and his wife was Joy - hence Charliejoy Gardens. Of course since then the vicarage has been sold for more housing, however as the beat officer for Northam I can remember having many a good afternoon in the garden of the vicarage when Angus was the vicar - for those who remember the beer loving, rugby playing man of the cloth. What a super chap he was and some good times in that garden.

Anyway, have a good weekend, perhaps even drop me a comment

Cheers

Dick

Team changes, an award and a busy couple of weeks

Hello again,

First of all, some good news for us, we have a new member joining the St Marys Safer neighbourhood Team on 6 July. PC Jeanette Denton is joining us from Shirley. She replaces PC Simon Bradshaw who left for the tactical cycle team last month. The bad news is that a few weeks after that I will be losing PC Steve McKenzie who will be joining the Town Centre Unit. Steve has been with me for about 3 years and has done a lot of good work in St Marys and will be missed, however good luck to him in the future. Jeanette will hit the streets running. Her specific areas of responsibility will include St Mary St, where we have just had the complaints of speeding, and rough sleepers getting into the rear of Corals at night and also Holyrood Estate where we still have some drugs issues. The other good news is that the whole team, and also our sector colleagues for Newtown, has been awarded Commanders Congratulations for - and I quote from the certificate - 'Good teamwork and community engagement over a prolonged period which has led to significant improvements in community safety, crime reduction and public trust and confidence'. It's nice to feel appreciated and fully deserved to the PCs and PCSOs that work really hard out in the patch.

I had a meeting with Charlotte Brown, head teacher at St Marys School and the caretaker, Mike Shergold. The school grounds are private property and actually belong to the Diocese of Winchester, but due to lack of green areas in St Marys, the school leave the grounds open evenings and weekends so the community, particularly children have somewhere to play. Unfortunately, this is being abused by dog walkers who allow their dogs to foul in the grounds. This is very unpleasant for the school and mike has to spend hours checking the playing field each morning and clearing up the mess. There is actually an offence of 'causing a nuisance on educational premises' which this clearly is and we have identified one culprit and will be dealing with that. We will be robustly dealing with incidents in the future. There are also people starting fires in the copse area, and again we will deal with that.

Last weekend was my nights weekend for the Night Time Economy, and what a busy weekend it was. We had over 10 prisoners each night and almost all the officers I had working for me had to stay on for overtime to finish dealing with their prisoners and paperwork. Thank goodness it only comes around every six weeks for me. Unfortunately, it takes me away from my community work for a week when I include the rest days before and after, so there was a lot of catching up to do this week - nearly there though.

Lunchtime today I attended the quarterly 'Safety in the Parks' meeting. This is another multi-agency meeting and the name is self explanatory. Fortunately there is reduced crime in the parks at the moment, but we discuss things like lighting, access and current trends. There has been significant work done in the parks over the last few years, including doubling the lighting in the main thoroughfares through Hoglands and extra lighting in the walkway in Watts Park behind the Cenotaph.

The team have been busy again this week. PCSO Kelly Drodge took our stands down to Albion Towers on Thursday morning for a few hours where Housing try to hold a roadshow each week and this week was our turn to help. In the evening Housing held a consultation event in Kingsland Estate with residents to identify their priorities for some funding that is available for the estate, so PCSO David Wright went along. This afternoon PC Phil Warwick is doing a joint visit with the housing officer for Northam Estate to a flat to advise the tenant that the behaviour breaches the tenancy agreement and the sort of action that the Council and Police will take if it continues. That’s a lot of work with Housing!

Well I think that’s about it for this week, thanks for those who have been trying to leave comments - they get attached to the blog that you click comment on, and may appear 'down the sheet' a bit. Have a good weekend

Cheers

Dick

Looking like a great summer - come and join us!

Hello again,

I know I mention meetings quite a lot, but there are so many! Last week I had some quite interesting ones that I can mention. On Wednesday I had two. Firstly in the morning was the CTCG (Community Tasking and Co-ordinating Group). This is a multi-agency meeting that is chaired by Derek Stevens who is the Operations Manager of the Council's Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Team. It covers the centre of Southampton, Northam, Newtown, St Marys, Waterfront, Polygon and City centre and is designed to gather, collate and analyse information and evidence of people involved in anti-social behaviour and hotspots, and propose, agree and support any actions taken. These meetings are held monthly and the topics range from petty nuisance by youngsters to problematic areas like the street drinkers and the violence attributed to the night time economy. I am a strong supporter of these meetings as there are a variety of agencies that attend and it provides a forum for joint working. Apart from the council's ASB team and police, other attendees include the Youth Service, Baseline (work with the top 50 children identified of being at risk of offending in SO14), Fire Service, SCC Housing, Swaythling Housing, Hyde Housing, SCC Family Intervention project, Parenting project, Youth Offending Team, Saucepans and others, so you can see the main people are invited.

On Wednesday evening I went to St Marys Football Stadium for the Stadium Monitoring Group. This is a group that was set up when Saints moved from the Dell down to St Marys, basically to safeguard the community impact the stadium would have within the area. There are representatives from each of the local communities, Northam, Newtown, St Marys, Woolston, Councillors, SCC traffic management and of course the club, particularly Mark Abrahams of Saints in the Community. Of course the main topic was the future of our beloved club, and although the club is optimistic of a takeover, there was nothing new that is not already being talked about. Life in Division One will be difficult for the season we are there - hopefully we will be seeing Pompey in the Championship the following season! The club has a community fund and the successful bids from this years fund were read out, and fortunately we were granted £400 to help arrange a trip to Fairthorne Manor for our Junior PCSO schemes. We had a trip last year and took the 20 children with the best attendance and they really enjoyed that, but just like everyone else we have to find funding for these type of events. Mark mentioned that during the summer holidays we will be working very closely with the club to deliver youth activities for 5 weeks. That was really successful last year, involving over 90 children, and is even bigger this year. Once arrangements have been completed by Jazz Bhatti of Saints - who is the co-ordinator - we will be popping out the flyers and leaflets.

On Friday I attended the K2 Urban Youth Festival planning meeting. K2 is an enormous and very successful youth event, held annually in Hoglands Park. Last year there were two events, but financial constraints this year means there will only be one - on 1 August - but it is going to be huge! Over 9000 people attended the final event last year. A lot of hard work is completed by lots of people, but the main drivers are Rob Kurn of Safe and Sound and Jane Farleigh of Newtown Youth Centre. We have attended and supported the event since it started, but basically still do the same - security marking of bikes, mobiles etc. Hopefully we have a bit more interactive stuff this year. We will be positioned next to the Police Authority, Fire Service, SCC ASB team and FAKE. The latter is an initiative set up by our firearms team to show the dangers of fake weapons and knives. It only started last October but is gaining national recognition and several forces are following the lead. The team visit schools, youth clubs and do several scenarios to show how they do 'stops' and explain why they have to do it the way they do. Really gripping stuff. The agencies at K2 are amazing, for example: Fairbridge, the Universities, Youth clubs, Teenage Pregnancy, Sports Development, Southampton Young Carers, No Limits, Chlamydia Screening Programme and the list goes on.

Back on the work front, we have had the bad arson in Union Rd, Northam which was in the Echo and had some community work to do around that. When there are incidents that may cause problems within the community we have to complete a Community Impact Assessment, so I had to review that as my Inspector is away at the moment. My colleague, Sgt Andrew Williams who looks after Newtown, was also away this week, and there were a couple of arsons on his patch, so I got tied up with them as well. We have also had successful drug warrants at Bernard St, and Union Rd again. When we do drug warrants we do a leaflet drop within the immediate area. This is to let people know what we have done, as they may have seen the police vehicles and wondered what was happening. A lot of the information comes from the community, so its only right we should let you know we have taken action on what you have told us. If you are worried about telling the police about what's happening in your neighbourhood, you can tell Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. It doesn't show up on your phonebill and they don't even ask you for a name.

Anyway, that’s about it for now,

Cheers

Dick

Street drinking and cycling successes

Hello again,

I have just returned from our Netley training and support headquarters after doing my annual First Aid refresher - yes on top of all our other work we still have to do that. Why is it that every time you do First Aid, CPR changes - now its 30 compressions and 2 breaths! Anyway, that's me trained for another year.

We had a small celebration this week as we have been informed that our bid to the Community Benefit Fund was successful - this is to take 20 of the Junior PCSOs to Fairthorne Manor activity centre for the day. We took the best 20 attendees last year and they really enjoyed it. Also, one of the developers in the city has offered funds towards a community project. I am aware that the City Reach youth club in Holyrood are after some bikes for a project and the developers have offered to purchase 6 bikes for them. We will work with City Reach to assist with project, and hopefully continue to reduce barriers between the youngsters and the police.

At the Northam Tenants and Residents Association (NTRA) on Monday we discussed the policing pledge and the fact that the safer neighbourhood team should create opportunities for the community to meet them at least monthly to discuss concerns and community priorities. Generally we meet this by having the weekly beat surgery at the Northam Housing office, but this is not a meeting as such. We have the NTRA meeting bi-monthly which has a police spot - so every other month is covered in a meeting and the residents at the NTRA requested that they would like a proper police meeting for the months in between the NTRA meetings. So from next month we will start that, for a trial for few months to see how it goes. That meeting - the first on 6 July at the NTRA office at 6pm - is open to everyone, residents and local businesses.

The PCSOs have been busy the last few weeks in St Mary St and Northam stopping people and asking them to complete a short questionnaire, in another attempt to gain the concerns and worries of the communities. I am pleased to say that the results show we are actually working on the most common concerns anyway. Street drinking is quite high on the agenda, particularly with the good weather, and one of the areas of concern is Kingsland Square where there is also the Kingsland Tavern and the Plume of Feathers. Both these pubs have been putting out tables and chairs for their customers, almost informal beer gardens. I identified from the licensing department that in fact neither pub owns any ground in the square and therefore anyone drinking outside the pubs actually falls foul of the drinking control regulations that cover the city. I visited both licensees and explained this, and both have now kept their customers inside with drink, which will hopefully reduce the complaints.

Just before I finish, I must tell you of an incident that PCSO David Wright has just informed of. Yesterday he was in St Marys when he saw 2 youngsters cycling on the pavement. He advised them of the law and said if he saw them again he would give them a fixed penalty notice (FPN). Well, he did catch them again. One youngster accepted an FPN, the other was a bit rude and declined to accept one, so PCSO Wright told him he would be reported for summons. Well, after a nights sleep, the youngster came to the police station to find PCSO Wright to apologise for his behaviour and actually asked for an FPN, which of course PCSO Wright duly served. That is a pleasant story.

Cheers

Dick

Doing it for the kids

Hello again,

Well I hope everyone had a good Bank Holiday - wasn't it wonderful weather. I was off from the Friday to the Monday, got plenty of gardening done and a barbecue each day. Hope that was not our summer!

Back to work, and school holidays means youth activities. On Tuesday PCSO Kelly Drodge assisted the neighbourhood wardens with an event at Newtown Youth Centre involving an art project. Then on Wednesday PCSOs Fiona Oates, Mark Reynolds, Kelly Drodge and Ed Wiggans and I took 20 of the Junior PCSOs down to the Streetwise project in Bournemouth, Dorset. We had to take two mini-buses and the Fire and Rescue Service kindly loaned us one with Alan Fryer to drive.

Streetwise is a really good project. Built in a warehouse on an industrial estate it’s a little village with two full size houses, a railway track, roads with working traffic lights, a park, police station and other stuff. The staff, all volunteers, lead the children around the scenarios - all with a safety message. We split the children into groups of four and did nine scenarios each. These include railway safety, fire, strangers, indeed anything can be made to fit. There is a smoke machine in the house and when that goes off, they get one of the children to make a 999 call where they get an operator and have to make the call real. The train is the front end of a real train, supplied by Virgin, with the train driver controls, and a video is played. One child is chosen to try to stop the train as soon as a child is seen running across the rail track - of course they cannot stop it in time. It took about two hours to get around and was really educational, I would certainly recommend if you have a youth group or similar. Indeed it is so real there that the emergency services use it for training. As you may recall the weather was awful on Wednesday, we had planned to take the children to the beach for a couple of hours, but due to the rain, popped down to Poole Quay for an ice-cream and back home. It was a really good day out.

Fiona also arranged a trip on Thursday, where she, Mark and Kelly took some more Junior PCSO to the Down to Earth farm project in Shirley. This time the weather was good and again the children had a really good time. Once we get the photos I will add some to the web page. That was followed on Thursday afternoon by the Safer Neighbourhood teams playing a 6 a-side game of football against some staff and clients from the Two Saints project in Newtown. The game ended about 12-11 to them I think. I went on as a sub and played the full hour - I am getting too old for this!

Looking forward to next week, we have a meeting on Monday to consider a Junior PCSO Conference in the summer to promote the scheme to other parts of the county. Since Sgt Andy Williams and I did our presentation in London a few weeks ago, I have been contacted by officers from Thames Valley Police and Sussex Police about setting up schemes.

There is also the Northam Tenants and Residents Association meeting. There will also be the Tesco Express police surgery in St Mary St 5.30 - 7.30 pm - pop along and see PCSO Fiona Oates.

Tuesday is the Golden Grove patch chat where we will discuss the issues relating to that area, and again discuss the St Marys community priorities. Wednesday evening I have been invited to the St Marys Tenants and Residents Committee meeting.

On thursday there is a meeting about some planned art work for the footbridge between Northam Road and the football stadium. However this may turn into a graffiti project - and if so, we as the police will not get involved in that. So far, PCSO Mark Reynolds has previously arranged for the bridge to be painted throughout, cleaned and have the Saints logo at one end. We will have to wait and see.

And finally on Saturday, PCSO Mark Reynolds and Kelly Drodge will be taking some Junior PCSOs up to the Enviro Day at the Bargate where we will have a stand.

Another full week and that does not include all the crime stuff that the PCs will be doing.

Finally I have lost a PC, as Simon Bradshaw has moved on the tactical cycle team. He has done really well for us and I wish him all the best for the future.

Speak to you next week

Cheers

Dick

Signs of summer...

Well with the nice weather, I abandoned the computer yesterday evening and went for a patrol around the patch.

I was intending to go to a meeting in Northam, but it was cancelled, so gave me some free time. Northam and St Marys gets some bad press, but it felt really nice wandering through the areas tonight - parents and children out at the play areas and everyone friendly. On Northam there were loads of kids in the play area in the middle of Kent St, some youngsters enjoying football at the 'Globe' by the community centre and more children in Union Rd play park. I went along Radcliffe Rd and through towards the stadium and on to Golden Grove. Through the underpass there was some graffiti and some bushes need trimming, so I made a note of that and have emailed Actionline at the City Council to see if they can remedy that.

Into Golden Grove, football training in the school playing field and the play park outside Albion Towers was full of children. St Mary Street was still bustling with people and then I went into Kingsland estate. Another park, and again full of children. As it was still warm I decided to go on to South Front, back into St Mary Street, through the St Marys Church grounds into Chapel, through there, over the footbridge to Marsh Lane and into Holyrood Estate, again another park with children. Finally I came back through Hoglands Park and to the station. Amazing that the sunny weather brings out so many people, and not a hint of bother. A great feeling of community spirit and cohesion.

During the week we have had a load more meetings, and the team have been busy with a few presentations. Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) Mike Kesslar-Lyne and PC Caroline Woodfield completed some presentations at City Training, part of City College, on the roles of PCSO and police. This is a rolling programme orgaised by our City College liaison PCSO, David Wright. Several of the team have also been out completeing some of our community questionnaires. Basically this is to capture the concerns of the public that may not attend residents meetings or maybe work in the area. We completed them in Northam precinct, Sure Start at Northam and St Mary Street near Tescos this week. The results were very reassuring actually. The concerns that were raised were generally our community priorities anyway, so it shows we are on the right track. The one issue that was new is speeding in St Mary Street, so we will have a look at that, and add as a concern at the moment, but not yet a priority. Thursday was the beat surgery in Northam Housing office.

I had the Holyrood Residents association AGM on Monday night, which was entertaining, but nothing of note for the police - thankfully! Tuesday I had the Kingsland Patch Chat. This is a meeting with agencies and a few residents of Kingsland about their concerns and worries, and what we, as agencies, are doing in the area. We discuss community priorities at these meetings. Nothing too much for ther Police on Kingsland at the moment - a few reports of drug use/dealing near the railway bridge, so we will patrol that a bit more often. The Housing department have a few things in the pipeline so there will be consultations to be planned to see what the residents want.

Following that meeting I went to St Marys Fire station with my colleague Sgt Andrew Williams to meet the new station manager. We had a really good chat and have arranged all our team to spend a days attachment with the fire service. They are all looking froward to that. Then I went straight on to Unity 101 community radio. Every Tuesday at 4.30pm one of our team does a 5 minute stint in the community hour hosted by Kelly, and this week was my turn.

On Wednesday I had my six weekly meeting with Wendy from the Youth Offending Team and Rhys and Hannah from Baseline. We discuss the 'ID50' group - which are the top 50 10-17yr olds within SO14 that are identified as at risk of offending. We share information on the children, on what they have been up to, any court action, involvement and intervention. It's surprising, (or perhaps not!), how the children say one thing to Youth Offending team and something else to Baseline, and that’s where this meeting is so useful. It benefits us, and in turn will benefit the children.

Next week is half term. PCSOs Fiona Oates, Kelly Drodge and Mark Reynolds have arranged a trip to Streetwise in Dorset for our Junior PCSOs and a visit to the farm project in Shirley, so they will be interesting. On Tuesday there is Kingsland, St Marys, Holyrood lunchtime meeting. PCSO Kelly Drodge is also assisting with a Junior Neighbourhood warden event at the fire station.

Well that’s about it for this week, hope you all have a good bank holiday weekend. Weather permitting, I shall be in the garden, probably plant out the pumpkins, squash and beans - hope for no frosts, then sit and relax with a glass of red wine to admire my hard work!

Cheers

Dick

A night in the life of Sergeant Partridge

Hello again,

Thanks for the comments that are coming in, and thanks for the return visitors - apparently in April there were 88 visits to blog - and not all mine! If you are looking at it, please pass on to others and tell me anyting else you would like included.

A bit different this week. As I have mentioned before I have to take part in the Violent Crime Strategy (VCS) or, as it is officially called, Operation Erwood. It is policing the night time economy in the city centre, and I and five other Sergeants take it in turns, so it works out every 6 weeks work on a Friday and Saturday night. Not what I would chose to do, but someone has to do it. So I thought I would take you through a night of VCS.

I wrote this update in the early hours of Saturday morning, after I finished the first shift.

Friday night 6.30pm:
I came on duty - it’s a 12 hour duty, so I am on until 6.30am Saturday morning. There were 35 emails from my 'day job' as a Neighbourhood Sergeant, but they may have to wait until I have finished VCS weekend. I have Monday and Tuesday as rest days after working nights so it will be Wednesday when they get dealt with. We have two briefings for the VCS officers which I lead. The first one is 7.30pm. So I have to look through the duties to find how many officers I have and who they are. On Friday night I had two from the City Centre unit, one SNT officer from Northam who is my own PC Dave Houghton and one from the Polygon beat. We were joined by a Special Constable and one student officer too. They are all due to work until 3am or 4am and until midnight I also had 2 PCSOs.

7.30 pm: Briefing.

8pm: After the briefing, off they go to keep the streets safe. I let the control room know who they are, check the custody block to see how many cells are spare - there are 10 already in custody tonight, so there will be enough room for another 10. Then check how many officers for the second briefing.

9.30pm: There are 15 officers, from Central, Portswood, Shirley and Bitterne and two Special Constables. We are also joined by the lady leading the Street Pastors scheme tonight, and two ladies from the council anti-social behaviour team who have come out as observers.

10pm: Off they go - deployed.
I undate the control room, check custody again.

10.30pm: Its time for me to go out and see how many people are in town tonight. Make sure I have allocated the officers to the right areas and hot spots.

12.20am: Come in for a cup of coffee. There's not too many people out tonight, the venues say numbers are low, but are sufficient to keep the tills going and stay open. The people who are out and about seem nice and friendly. The street pastors are wandering around without a lot to do at the moment. We have just used a power that we have to disperse a person from the city centre for alcohol related anti-social behaviour. It's called Section 27 and the person can be removed for up to 48 hrs - a really good power. So someone is having an early night. One arrest so far - a man found in possession of possible cocaine.

1am: Back on the streets, all quite jovial and friendly.

1.55am: Man arrested for coming back into town after being dispersed on a Section 27.

2.40am: Man arrested for drunk and disorderly

2.41am: Man arrested for Assault. Southampton Central cells now full.

2.50am: Three more arrested for breaching Section 27 - prisoners taken to Bitterne cells.
This leaves less officers on the streets for the final closing time with officers taking statements for several assaults or escorting prisoners.

3.15am: One of the food outlets that only has a licence to 3am is still serving, so I visit and report them.

3.30am: I am back in the station to start my report and find out how many prisoners, where the prisoners are and ensure officers have the prisoner handover packs ready for the morning. Its been a busy night over in Shirley and they are keen to have their officers back.

4am: Checked with custody, all prisoners accounted for. Officers kept on duty to complete their prisoner handover packs.

5am: I start checking prisoner handover packs.

6.30am Finally I can go home now. Time for a glass or two of wine before I go to bed. My wife often spends my VCS weekend at her sisters rather than try to keep quiet all day Saturday and Sunday while I am in bed, but all my meals are prepared and in the freezer!

That's the end of Friday night, same again on Saturday!

Would you come to public meetings?

As mentioned in the last blog, Sergeant Andy Williams and I went up to London to give a series of four presentations at the National Policing Improvement Agency seminar. They went very well. We had an audience of about 40 people in each session and received some really good feedback - in fact one session gave us a round of applause.

We explained how we do our community engagement in Northam, Newtown and St Marys. They were particularly interested in the Junior PCSO schemes, our stop/search role plays and how we try to engage with the harder to reach groups, especially in Newtown and things like when Andy has spoken at the Mosques during Friday prayers reagarding some of the recent Muslim issues. We took some of our newsletters, My Beat leaflets and other leaflets we use and send out - really just for people to look at, but after the first session the group took them all so we had none for anyone else! Just goes to show that what we are doing here is not happening everywhere. The audience were from police and other agencies including the Met, City of London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex forces. We have several email addresses now to send stuff off to. Overall a good experience.

Anyway, brought back down to earth when we returned to Southampton. As a result of the London trip I missed the Chapel residents' meeting, but PCSO Fiona Oates went along. I gather the meeting was much better than the previous one - for us anyway - as the vehicle crime in Chapel has reduced again.

We have had several reports this week about drug related problems and possible dealing in and around College Street, where the Drug Intervention Project(DIP) is. We have good contact with the DIP and regularly pop in, but with these extra concerns have also completed some plain clothes operations in the area. These have been useful, although after about an hour the people identify us, and give us a wave. I do not mind them knowing we are there actually, because the dealers will then be aware and hopefully move away and work somewhere else.

Regarding the policing pledge, I have included this piece in my recent newsletters about a possible monthly meeting for each beat for people to let us know of there concerns or worries. Have a look and please let me know what you think about a monthly meeting.

Policing Pledge – Monthly Meetings and Community Priorities

The Policing Pledge states that the police will arrange regular meetings in the neighbourhood, at least once a month to discuss the community priorities.

We currently discuss the community priorities at the residents meetings, where the public have full access, and at quarterly patch chats. This seems to work well, however does not exactly comply with the pledge of monthly meetings. We do have the weekly surgery at the Northam Housing office, and regular surgeries at Tesco Express, St Marys School, City College and Halls of Residence but this is not exactly a public meeting.

Would you support monthly police meetings?

I am happy to arrange monthly public meetings in Northam and St Marys to discuss the community priorities, but we would need people to attend. Please let me know if this is something that you would like me to arrange, or confirm you are happy with the current arrangements for community priority setting.

Well that’s it for now

Cheers

Dick.

Busy busy busy...

Hello again,

Another busy week with the school holidays, but for us in the centre of Southampton, that is because of our involvement in youth activities and not, as you may assume, reports of juvenile nuisance. Several years ago, that was the case - we would be chasing youngsters all over the place, with loads of reports of anti-social behaviour (ASB). However, we have worked hard with a variety of agencies to reduce the ASB, and now school holidays are no different for reports than any other time, in fact sometimes lower.

Last week we worked with Swaythling Housing for a street briefing in Chapel to talk to people about their problems, and on Friday several of the Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) worked with Swaythling and took over 20 children to Northam Community Centre for a cookery session. Lots of fun and sloppy puddings kept the children, and PCSOs, happy.

We also had some more 'community punishment'. Several youngsters in Northam had been identified by PCSO Reynolds as being responsible for some graffiti in one of the business areas, but there would not have been enough proof to take them to court. PCSO Reynolds spoke to the youths with their parents and the youths agreed to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday morning cleaning up the area, graffiti wipes, and weeding. There are some good photos, but unfortunately under 'Human Rights' I cannot put them in the blog - which is a shame. However this is the third time this year we have got children to clean up a mess they have made, and each time the children have not re-offended, so it is something we will keep trying.

I am off to London again this week. The NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency) have asked my colleague, Sgt Andrew Williams who looks after Newtown, and me to give presentations at the next set of NPIA workshops. It's four workshops in a day for the Metropolitan, Kent, Sussex, City of London and Surrey forces regarding Innovations in Community Engagement. We have been chosen following recognition of the 'excellent' engagement we have in Northam, St Marys and Newtown. So, on Wednesday its up to the Russell Hotel for the night and presentations on Thursday. Hopefully we can make it look reasonably professional and pass on some of our experiences to the other forces - and maybe pick up a few tips from them as well. Its good for us to receive recognition that what we are doing is the right way.

Its another week of meetings as well. On Tuesday I had the K2 festival meeting. That’s the youth festivals that are held in Hoglands Park each year (June, July and August). We get involved with a stand and mix with the youngsters. That’s followed by a meeting about Decent Neighbourhoods in Kingsland where the council have some money to spend on improvements and we go along with Housing to discuss the issues and ideas.

Today (Wednesday) I have the Baseline steering group and ID 50 meetings. I have worked with Baseline since it started in Southampton over 10 years ago. Baseline was part of Crime Concern which is now called Catch 22 after joining with another group. Basically, it works in the SO14 post code area and we identify the top 50 youths, 10-16yrs of age that are considered at risk of offending, and the Baseline staff work with these youngsters to try to keep them on the straight and narrow. I think it has been very successful over the years and one of a number of initiatives that has helped reduce the reports of juvenile nuisance in SO14.

Thursday night is the Chapel residents group - which I shall miss as I am in London - but PCSO Fiona Oates who looks after Chapel has changed her rest days to attend.

There is also the Northam 521 youth group/City Reach youth group meeting, which again I will miss. Then on Friday we have a crime survey with Housing in Northam Estate. Finally on Sunday there is the St Georges Day parade in St Mary St and the Junior PCSO under the guidance of PCSOs Kelly Drodge and Fiona Oates will be working with volunteers from Solent University on a 'paint-fest' to paint the footbridge from Deanery to Chapel. Just a normal week really.

Cheers

Dick

Back to work in time for the Easter break

Hello again,

Sorry its been over a week since my last update - I was on leave last week. Luckily I picked a good week weather-wise. I went to Cornwall and did a few more miles of the South West Coastal path near Boscastle and had my fill of pasties and Cornish Ale. If you are ever in Boscastle try the Cobwebs Pub, great food and about 4 real ales on.

Anyway, back to work, and I was welcomed by over 150 emails! On Monday we had the Northam Tenants and Residents Association meeting. We normally have a Police spot at the residents meetings and this gives us an opportunity to tell the residents what we have been doing, to listen to any of their concerns and to discuss the community priorities. Each beat has three community priorities. These are the concerns that the police and other agencies are working on as they are the things that concern the community the most. In Northam the Community Priorities were youth nuisance in Lumpy Lane and Northam Estate, graffiti on Northam Estate and parking problems on Northam Estate. The residents stated that they were happy we have been working on the graffiti, and that in fact the problem has been reduced. They were more concerned about the street drinkers that gather on the estate. As such we will take street drinking back on as a priority. PC Phil Warwick and PCSO Ed Wiggans will take ownership. They will continue to enforce the Drinking Zone legislation which operates throughout Southampton and visit some of the places which may be involved to see what alternatives we can come up with.

Regarding vehicle crime - our old favourite. The rates of incidents are still relatively low - averaging about 20 a rolling month, and only one incident reported in Chapel recently. However, this week, there were 2 men arrested for vehicle crime in one of the underground car parks in Chapel, and yesterday two youths in Notham arrested for vehicle theft.

As we approach Easter, and school holidays, we have had our Safer Neighbourhoods gazebo down in Hoglands Park. This is because we get increased crime reported during school holidays as children use the park and leave their bags, with mobiles all around the park, particularly the skate area. We chat to the children, advise them about crime prevention and also security mark mobiles, bikes and skateboards. We spent last Saturday, Sunday and Monday down there and coded loads of equipment.

Please keep the comments coming in and let me know of anything inparticular you would like featured.

Cheers

Dick

Summer in the city?

Well, is summer here early this year - or will this be our summer?

At least it is more pleasant for the team as they pound the streets of St Marys and Northam, back in shirt sleeves rather than fleeces. Of course everyone else thinks summer is here as well, and we have had several calls this week regarding nuisances in the parks. One of the main complaints is people using barbecues. I have not been able to find that this is against any bye law and it seems people can use barbecues in the parks, unless someone can tell me otherwise? However, of course if you have the barbecue directly on the grass, and damage the grass, then this can be considered criminal damage. There are also littering offences if people do not tidy up behind themselves, and of course the parks are within the drinking control zone for Southampton, so alcohol can be confiscated and poured away if there is any anti-social behaviour linked to the drinking. We do this as a matter of course on Friday and Saturday nights in the City Centre.

Another complaint is youths playing football in the cricket squares - funnily enough the byelaws do cover this, in that people are not allowed to play another sport in an area set aside for a particular sport, although of course the byelaws do not write it a plain as that. City patrol can also use these powers and patrol the parks as well as ourselves.

Crimes wise, vehicle crime for Northam and St Marys is still quite low - 9 reports in the last month compared to 15 over the same period last year. However, cycle thefts are on the increase throughout the city. If you have a bike, please ensure you secure it properly, get it security marked, and if it is an expensive bike - which is more likely to be unique - then take a photo. If it is stolen we can circulate the photo.

One of the things I have not mentioned much before in the blog is our work with older, troublesome teenagers who are leaving school. Although it is difficult for us to engage with many of them, because they do not want to be engaged with, we have managed a few introductions in the past. This year PCSOs Mark Reynolds and Ed Wiggans, and PC Phil Warwick have been assisting youngsters to get to college, into other post-school training and, in some cases, introductions for jobs. Its up to the young people themselves after that to do their bit. We are currently waiting for the results of a few referrals to Sparsholt College and I have a meeting with one young person next week when they attend the Youth Offending Team for their supervision work. It is an area I think we can develop, and if we can get a few results, then we may get the trust of others and help them towards work rather than accepting a life of crime.

You may recall a few weeks ago I mentioned we had gained an interim anti-social behaviour order against a young person, and almost the next day they were arrested for breaching the ASBO, well they are in custody again for breaching it.

Junior PCSOs get recognition

On March 11 I attended the Royal National Hotel in London for the second Connecting People awards. It is a prestigous event, attended by over 550 guests, and organised by Northern, Midlands and Southern Housing magazines in conjunction with TPAS, and rewards tenants and people who work in communities across England.

I attended with Swaythling Housing Association who submitted the Junior PCSO scheme for the awards. Swaythling supported us in the first sheme and Lumpy lane, Northam, as they are the landlord and this was the first scheme of its type when PCSO Mark Reynolds started it in October 2007. A month later PCSO Jade Missen started a scheme in Chapel, and Swaything again helped and supported the scheme. Swaythling have continued their involvement and supported the schemes financially on events like the Junior PCSO Xmas parties.

There were over 100 submissions for the awards in our category of community involvement and we were chosen as one of the five nominations shortlisted for the awards ceremony in London. Unfortunately we did not win, but to be in the final five was a great achievement. PCSO Mark Reynolds and PCSO Fiona Oates (who now runs the Chapel scheme) came with me and Swaythling were represented by Steph Binks, Cita jagot and Jade Missen, who, unfortunately for my team, went to work for Swaythling as their development officer following her excellent work in Chapel as a PCSO. Swaythling have since started further schemes in one of their developments in Amesbury, and of course within the Constabulary the schemes are spreading Junior PCSOs now in Gosport, Aldershot and other areas.

We were not the only nomination from Southampton, indeed Northam. Carl Collins, who is the Chair of the Northam Tenants and Residents Association was nominated in the Tenant of the Year category for his great work in Northam. Unfortunately for Carl, he was not selected as a winner either, however its tremendous that of the two nominations from Southampton, both involved Northam.

On the enforcement front, we are still plugging away at cycling on the pavement tickets and parking obstructions in Northam Estate, Golden grove and Deanery Estate. PC Phil Warwick has had a good result with the obstruction on Northam. It has been identified that staff from businesses in Princes St regularly park on the estate, using up valuable spaces and causing concern to residents and Phil has been working with parking services of the council who are negociating a deal with the company for an annual discounted parking rate at the local SCC car park, so that may ease some of the problems.

Finally, meetings wise this week, I atteded a Safety in the Parks meeting on Thursday. This is a group that meets every three months to discuss park security. Unfortunately the parks do get a bad name at times, but with basic security, like not walking through there alone, tha parks are as safe as the streets. A lot of work has been completed at Hoglands Park with extra lighting on the main thoroughfares and the pavillions have been renovated and are used as youth venues severas evenings a week now. During the school holiday periods from Easter to October, we have a police gazebo near the skate board park for the first few days of the holidays to talk to youngsters about basic security, not leaving items on display, unnattended bags etc, as well as post coding bikes, boards and mobiles. This seems to work quite well and we have City patrol and other agencies to attend aswell.

Watching the detectives

Hello again,

Well this week I have been on a CID attachment at Shirley. We do not have a CID team at Southampton Central, and the officers from Shirley cover my area. I have been shadowing the Detective Sergeants to see what they do and how they do it.

It is very different from my normal role. On Monday they had new incidents come in from the weekend, and allocated detectives to each investigation/job. One of the jobs was the assault on the Cardiff City football supporter, which has been the subject of considerable media coverage. The police media department released certain information to the press and it is surprising how that information then appears in the media. However, the publicity has produced quite a bit of information from the public and the team are working well on the enquiries. This job was particularly interesting for me as this is within my area, and as you may have previously read, there has been quite a bit of activity within the Chapel area recently.

These crimes are on top of several long term, in depth investigations that CID are dealing with. Certainly in real life things are not as quick as they are dealt with in The Bill on TV.

Back to my patch. The vehicle crime spree in Chapel seems to have stopped - no vehicle crime reported there for a month. It is still reduced in Northam and the other areas of St Marys as well.

Last week we gained an ASBO on a youth, one of the conditions was not to enter Northam and most of St Marys. Well, the youth was arrested on Monday when he breached the ASBO and was found inside the area he is excluded from. PC Dave Houghton is now working with the council for an ASBO on another youngster.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. Don't forget to leave a comment if there's something you want to say - I've managed to answer a couple that were waiting for me, as well as writing this update for you.

Back to work

Hello again,

Are you reading this blog? We need to know if people are reading it and finding it useful. Please leave us a comment, even if it's just to say hello.

I am back from leave and was refreshed until, like many people nowadays, I opened my email account to find over 150 emails waiting for me. I am on day three now and just finished getting through them. The only problem is that when I do reply to people - they reply again!

In fact I did have to come in on my leave. Due to the incident in Derby Rd on the evening of 20 Feb, which has been well publicised, I was called in on Saturday, February 21 to help with the community impact of the incident. I assisted Insp Kirby, my supervisor, who is responsible for the policing of Northam, Newtown and St Marys, with getting an operation order together and arranging officers to cover high visibility patrols for several nights within the Newtown area. There have been a variety of meetings that will hopefully reduce tensions and the chance of further incidents.

We all have to keep up to date with our training as well, so on Monday it was my annual personal safety training day. This training has changed over time and now spends longer on the actual laws that allow us to use the power of force, and also body pressure points so we can get people to move, or release ourselves if we do end up in a fight. Next week I have a CID attachment for a week, which all the sergeants have to do. CID is not really my thing; I much prefer the interaction and problem solving stuff involved with community policing, but again its something we have to do.

Back to Northam and St Marys.

On February 25, PC Caroline Woodield, one of my officers for St Marys, arranged and executed a drug warrant in James St, St Marys, following considerable information. As a result some drugs were recovered and one man was charged. When we execute warrants we produce leaflets and distribute them around the immideiate area and door knock the area to let people know what we have done and to see if they have any concerns for us. We have found that really good in letting people know what is happening, particularly as a lot of the information comes from the local community. The warrant was well timed as we had the St Marys Tenants' and Residents' meeting last night, so I was able to update them. These meetings are also the place where we discuss our community priorities with the community, to identify what they want us to deal with.

On Tuesday we had the Kingsland Patch Chat - this is another meeting where we identify issues, not just for the police, but for all the agencies that attend. Present at these meetings are Housing, Neighbourhood wardens, City Patrol, residents' groups representatives, youth group leaders and Open Spaces. We discuss items from drug dealing to broken paving slabs - the aim is to enable all the agencies to identify the issues that concern residents and update them on what we are all doing.

Last week the planned clean ups in Lumpy Lane and Chapel areas went well, with support from Swaythling Housing. We hope these will be regular events.

Just to remind people, we have the following police surgeries planned:

Northam Housing Office: every Thursday 3-4pm
St Marys School: 6 March 9-10am
Tescos Express St Mary Street: 2 March 5.30-7.30pm