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