The Policing Pledge

Well after the excitement of Twickenham, we are back to our routine job again. The tag rugby sessions are continuing and we are looking at progressing the project with the RFU to include youth clubs and will be aiming to have holiday sessions next year, which will be called the Southampton Street Rugby Project.

An interesting point this week is the latest media release of details of the Policing Pledge. I am confident that the Safer Neighbourhood Team covering Northam and St Marys meets the pledge, with the only exception being the monthly meeting in St Marys. There appears to be some discussion as to what the Pledge means about monthly contact/meetings to identify and set community priorities. Being a simple soul, I take it as a meeting the Police would hold in each area, once a month where the public are invited to come along and discuss their issues, identify the top three and then the Police, with other agencies, will tell you what we intend to do about them. Next month, we update the community and go through the same thing again. This happens in Northam where we attend the Northam Tenants and Residents Association meeting one month where we have a police slot, and then hold a public police meeting the next month. It seems to work quite well, and although not a lot of people turn up, we can only work with those that do attend. Councillor Stephen Barnes-Andrews and SCC Housing officer Adam Cresser kindly come along to the monthly meetings and can take away any issues that apply to them. Once it’s all clarified we will introduce something similar to St Marys. Regarding the rest of the pledge - we are complying already.

You may remember the time capsule that the Junior PCSO schemes were doing for Black History Month. Well last week a bus-load of the juniors went to a 'secret location' and buried the time capsule. It will be recovered in 5 years time. The children really enjoyed themselves identifying their black heroes and it will be interesting to see what they all think of their current thoughts in 2014.

This week PC Jeanette Denton completed another Op Stop in St Mary St, this time issuing two fixed penalty notices for no seat belts. Unfortunately the operation was curtailed a bit when there was an accident in the area and all the officers went off to deal with that.

Finally, the Constabulary are recruiting again and are fast-tracking PCSOs. This is great for the PCSOs, however all of mine, bar one, are applying. I wish them all the very best, but hope they are not all successful otherwise I will be losing a great team!!

Cheers

Dick