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
Friday, 23 October 2009
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
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
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
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