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