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