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
Friday, 26 June 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
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
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
Thursday, 4 June 2009
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
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
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