Hello again, as I write this the snow has settled and there is a chill in the air. However, we are still here and an impressive number of staff made it in to work today to ensure we are able to continue to provide a good level of service.
I have been in post for a couple of months now. I have got to know my team, the areas of Northam & St Mary's and some of the good and not so good people in those areas. Rest assured, my team and I will continue working with the good people to make life difficult for the not so good. We can make a difference to Northam & St Mary's but we rely on your assistance and information. You can get in touch in a variety of ways; 0845 045 4545, 101, ryan.bartlett@hampshire.pnn.police.uk or by speaking to any of the officers you see out and about.
We have had a couple of personnel changes of late; the officers that covered Northam or St Mary's will now work as one big team so you may see a few different faces patrolling your area and PC Holly Freize has joined from the Polygon team. Holly will be leading the engagement work that the team does and I will be concentrating more on the crime investigation work that goes on. The service you receive won't change, but on occasions it will be me that attends these events and on others it will be Holly.
Remember as Christmas is fast approaching; please take basic crime prevention measures. Make sure doors and windows are locked, don't leave valuables on display (in your house or vehicle), use a light switch timer if you are going to be out or away whilst it's dark and don't leave empty boxes outside your address advertising the nice new presents you've received.
If I don't get a chance to speak again before Christmas then please have a very enjoyable holiday, stay safe and have a happy new year
Ryan
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
New Sergeant
Hello, and welcome to the first of my blogs!
I have now taken over from Dick Partridge and I’d like to start by thanking him for all the hard work he’s done for the people of St Mary’s & Northam over the years. In fact, Dick has recently been congratulated by the Chief Constable for the work he has done.
I’ve now been in post for a couple of weeks and I’ve managed to get out and about and walk around my new patch and meet some of the residents. I’m really glad to be in this post and I see it has a great opportunity. The key for me and the team is to keep working to the high standards that they have achieved and to keep improving. We will do this by speaking to the community about your issues and ensuring that St Mary’s & Northam remains a good place to live, work and visit
Thanks
Sgt Ryan Bartlett
I have now taken over from Dick Partridge and I’d like to start by thanking him for all the hard work he’s done for the people of St Mary’s & Northam over the years. In fact, Dick has recently been congratulated by the Chief Constable for the work he has done.
I’ve now been in post for a couple of weeks and I’ve managed to get out and about and walk around my new patch and meet some of the residents. I’m really glad to be in this post and I see it has a great opportunity. The key for me and the team is to keep working to the high standards that they have achieved and to keep improving. We will do this by speaking to the community about your issues and ensuring that St Mary’s & Northam remains a good place to live, work and visit
Thanks
Sgt Ryan Bartlett
Friday, 10 September 2010
Update from the Custody Sergeant Course
Hello again, just before Ryan comes into post and starts on the blog, I thought I could let you know about the course I am on. It is the end of the second week now, and my mind has been blown away!! Officers, and prisoners, always complain about how long it takes to get processed into custody and having to wait so long in the holding cell. Now I can tell them why. On the course, our first week was spent just going through the computer system that is used in custody. Although it is part of our main computer software, it has all its own applications relating to custody. The problem is that it is so confusing. Some of the sergeants on my course will only be doing custody duties as and when, and I feel sorry for them, as they will have to try to remember everything. At least, those of us that are moving full time to custody will be doing it all the time and get used to the system.
This week, we have been covering prisoner reception, booking in, risk assessment and welfare. It is a huge part of the course and covered by law. Obviously many of the prisoners that are in custody are vulnerable one way or another, under the influence of drink or drugs, injured from assaults – a whole multitude of risks. One of the sobering presentations has been from our Professional Standards Department relating to death in custody situations, and of course a huge input from medical professionals. Next week we have more in the classroom, followed by several days shadowing in a cell block. I shall do my shadowing in Southampton, so may come across some of my ‘friends’ from Northam and St Marys. That will be followed by 3 days of 1st Aid before I am let loose in custody. Anyway, back to class, and looking forward to a whole weekend off for a change.
Cheers
Dick
This week, we have been covering prisoner reception, booking in, risk assessment and welfare. It is a huge part of the course and covered by law. Obviously many of the prisoners that are in custody are vulnerable one way or another, under the influence of drink or drugs, injured from assaults – a whole multitude of risks. One of the sobering presentations has been from our Professional Standards Department relating to death in custody situations, and of course a huge input from medical professionals. Next week we have more in the classroom, followed by several days shadowing in a cell block. I shall do my shadowing in Southampton, so may come across some of my ‘friends’ from Northam and St Marys. That will be followed by 3 days of 1st Aid before I am let loose in custody. Anyway, back to class, and looking forward to a whole weekend off for a change.
Cheers
Dick
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Going, going, gone…………..Dick has left the building!!
Well, this is it, my final day as the Safer Neighbourhood Team Sgt for Northam and St Marys. I have spent the day clearing my desk and sorting stuff out ready for my replacement, Sgt Ryan Bartlett. He will also be taking over the blog.
Yesterday I took Ryan around both beats and visited some of the key people and agencies, my apologies to those we missed, but only had the day. In Northam we popped in and had a cup of tea with an elderly lady whom I have known since I was down there as the beat officer. Sadly, she has lost her husband, but he was interesting chap who was a dispatch rider in the war, and would always show his photos. She still remembers how I take my coffee. We visited the chair of the Northam residents group and later the chair of the Holyrood residents group. Agency wise we saw the girls at Baseline, they work with loads of the kids in our patch, and then on to Housing. I have worked really closely with Housing during my time here. The housing officers are so helpful and useful. They even had a leaving prezzie for me!! Thanks.
Work wise there is plenty going on. The major crime team are still in Northam on Operation Savannah, following up on the murder investigation for Shawn Williams. Yesterday we assisted the tasking team in 4 drug warrants in Northam and Holyrood. That resulted in several arrests. This is where we need the help of the community to tell us of their concerns, and then of course we need to act upon them. It is not always possible to deal with these things as quickly as we would like, and there may be other factors, or as often referred to as ‘the bigger picture’, but we will do everything we can. The team have been kept busy with several prisoners and finishing off some crimes. PC Dave Houghton has 2 chaps back on bail for charging with several offences in Northam, PC Sharon Conway has had 2 youths charged and another cautioned for an assault in St Marys. PC Jeanette Denton is arranging another traffic operation for Chapel Rd, to deter speeders and check documents while Central Bridge is still closed.
In amongst this we have supplied at least 2 PCSO each day to the Summer Activity Programme that we have assisted Saints in the Community at St Marys School. There have been 50-60 kids at the activities each day of the 4 weeks that it has been running. That has been a great success again. Yet again during the school holidays there has not been an increase in anti social behaviour on our patch, and it is schemes like this that help keep the kids busy.
I have just noticed the comment from Nigel about the Tilley Awards. This is an award scheme relating to problem solving policing. Due to success of the drug operations in Albion Towers it was decided to nominate Operation Acer to the awards in 2003 and was one of only two initiatives submitted by Hampshire Constabulary that year. Although we did not win anything it was listed in the Tilley Awards schedule for 2003. Relating to Nigels other question of how the number of PC and PCSO for each beat are allocate, this was last reviewed when safer neighbourhood policing was introduced. The numbers were calculated using a variety of information including the social demographics of the area, amount of reported crime, population etc etc. There is no doubt that with the impending government cuts that there will be further reviews.
Well, that’s about. I have spent a fortune in ASDA getting in the doughnuts for my last day, next Tuesday I am back to training school at Netley to start my custody course. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog, thanks to all of those that have helped and supported me through the years and good luck for the future.
Over to you Ryan…………………..
Cheers
Dick
Yesterday I took Ryan around both beats and visited some of the key people and agencies, my apologies to those we missed, but only had the day. In Northam we popped in and had a cup of tea with an elderly lady whom I have known since I was down there as the beat officer. Sadly, she has lost her husband, but he was interesting chap who was a dispatch rider in the war, and would always show his photos. She still remembers how I take my coffee. We visited the chair of the Northam residents group and later the chair of the Holyrood residents group. Agency wise we saw the girls at Baseline, they work with loads of the kids in our patch, and then on to Housing. I have worked really closely with Housing during my time here. The housing officers are so helpful and useful. They even had a leaving prezzie for me!! Thanks.
Work wise there is plenty going on. The major crime team are still in Northam on Operation Savannah, following up on the murder investigation for Shawn Williams. Yesterday we assisted the tasking team in 4 drug warrants in Northam and Holyrood. That resulted in several arrests. This is where we need the help of the community to tell us of their concerns, and then of course we need to act upon them. It is not always possible to deal with these things as quickly as we would like, and there may be other factors, or as often referred to as ‘the bigger picture’, but we will do everything we can. The team have been kept busy with several prisoners and finishing off some crimes. PC Dave Houghton has 2 chaps back on bail for charging with several offences in Northam, PC Sharon Conway has had 2 youths charged and another cautioned for an assault in St Marys. PC Jeanette Denton is arranging another traffic operation for Chapel Rd, to deter speeders and check documents while Central Bridge is still closed.
In amongst this we have supplied at least 2 PCSO each day to the Summer Activity Programme that we have assisted Saints in the Community at St Marys School. There have been 50-60 kids at the activities each day of the 4 weeks that it has been running. That has been a great success again. Yet again during the school holidays there has not been an increase in anti social behaviour on our patch, and it is schemes like this that help keep the kids busy.
I have just noticed the comment from Nigel about the Tilley Awards. This is an award scheme relating to problem solving policing. Due to success of the drug operations in Albion Towers it was decided to nominate Operation Acer to the awards in 2003 and was one of only two initiatives submitted by Hampshire Constabulary that year. Although we did not win anything it was listed in the Tilley Awards schedule for 2003. Relating to Nigels other question of how the number of PC and PCSO for each beat are allocate, this was last reviewed when safer neighbourhood policing was introduced. The numbers were calculated using a variety of information including the social demographics of the area, amount of reported crime, population etc etc. There is no doubt that with the impending government cuts that there will be further reviews.
Well, that’s about. I have spent a fortune in ASDA getting in the doughnuts for my last day, next Tuesday I am back to training school at Netley to start my custody course. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog, thanks to all of those that have helped and supported me through the years and good luck for the future.
Over to you Ryan…………………..
Cheers
Dick
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Saturday night in Southampton
Hello again,
As I am doing nights again for the late night economy operation I thought I would let you know what happened tonight. It was a surprise, but town was absolutely packed tonight. Loads of stag parties going around and loads of people out. The venues were all pleased as there have not been many busy nights in the current financial climate. Amazingly we only had 3 prisoners from the operation tonight, generally speaking everything was quite good natured.
The first prisoner was a chap going into Leisure World. While being searched, as a condition of entry he was found to have a knife in his bag – this is considered to be an offensive weapon, so he came in. The next prisoner was a bloke who has allegedly assaulted his girlfriend in a club. This was in the early hours of the morning and they had drunk quite a bit. We see loads of ‘domestics’ during an evening, but not many get violent. This chap was dragged out of the club, we have provided him with B & B and he will get dealt with later. The third prisoner was arrested for having a load of cannabis on him. Officers received information that he was carrying it, so they stopped him, searched him and found it. Again, he will be sorted out in the morning. There were also at least 3 drink drivers picked up in town tonight.
Nevertheless, the cells are quite full with prisoners being brought in from other parts of the city for burglary and fights amongst other things. This means the teams starting in the morning will be tied up dealing with nights prisoners before they can pick up the other jobs that come in.
Anyway, it means home time for me. I am off now until Wednesday, although I will spend up till lunchtime in bed today. A day to remember with Blackpool at the top of the premiership – well done to them – and thanks to Reading for getting a late goal at Pompey.
See you soon, Cheers
Dick
As I am doing nights again for the late night economy operation I thought I would let you know what happened tonight. It was a surprise, but town was absolutely packed tonight. Loads of stag parties going around and loads of people out. The venues were all pleased as there have not been many busy nights in the current financial climate. Amazingly we only had 3 prisoners from the operation tonight, generally speaking everything was quite good natured.
The first prisoner was a chap going into Leisure World. While being searched, as a condition of entry he was found to have a knife in his bag – this is considered to be an offensive weapon, so he came in. The next prisoner was a bloke who has allegedly assaulted his girlfriend in a club. This was in the early hours of the morning and they had drunk quite a bit. We see loads of ‘domestics’ during an evening, but not many get violent. This chap was dragged out of the club, we have provided him with B & B and he will get dealt with later. The third prisoner was arrested for having a load of cannabis on him. Officers received information that he was carrying it, so they stopped him, searched him and found it. Again, he will be sorted out in the morning. There were also at least 3 drink drivers picked up in town tonight.
Nevertheless, the cells are quite full with prisoners being brought in from other parts of the city for burglary and fights amongst other things. This means the teams starting in the morning will be tied up dealing with nights prisoners before they can pick up the other jobs that come in.
Anyway, it means home time for me. I am off now until Wednesday, although I will spend up till lunchtime in bed today. A day to remember with Blackpool at the top of the premiership – well done to them – and thanks to Reading for getting a late goal at Pompey.
See you soon, Cheers
Dick
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Back from leave.
Hello again. I am back from my leave. My wife and I went out to Canada to visit our son and family, great to see the grandchildren again. We had a few days in the Rockies – even saw 2 bears, which is more than we saw in the two and half years we spent out there in the 80’s when I was in the Army.
Back to work and there was quite a bit to catch up on. We have had the incident where a man was assaulted in Northam, went to hospital but was later found dead in Shirley. There have been several meetings in Northam regarding this and a lot of activity from our colleagues in the major crime team.
On Tuesday we had the St Marys PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting and had the best attendance we have had for this meeting with 18 people coming along. Only one of the Community Priorities were changed. The drug litter issues in the bin area of Carpathia Drive was changed back to nuisance at the football cage in James St. Following the last meeting we spoke to the management of the Deanery Estate and they put locks on the door to the bin area at Carpathia Drive which seems to have reduced that problem, although we think the users may be using somewhere else on the estate now. James St cage has been on and off for months. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before – it is a football facility and people use it for football (most of the time) but they are noisy and it is in close proximity to some flats. The other priorities of youth nuisance on Holyrood Estate and drug issues at Albion Towers play area were retained. The youth nuisance group in Holyrood – well actually they are more like young adults – the 16-19 age group – have been frequently particular properties that are causing problems and we are working with the council to try to sort that out. This group, which consists of people from all over the city, have been committing crime in various parts of the city, so have lots of officers chasing them. Three have been arrested and remanded in custody, several others arrested and on bail so we will keep chasing them.
This weekend is my VCS (Violent Crime Strategy) duty again. Tonight, Friday, was actually not a bad duty. We only had one arrest relating to the night time economy. That was a young girl arrested for being drunk and incapable in Town Quay. She was found lying on the ground, totally out of it. The officers wanted to take her home, but she refused all details, so in she came. Most venues closed by two o’clock and only a few were happy with the numbers of customers. It’s a hard time for them aswell. Of course, we are more than happy with this situation, although there was a nasty feeling in the air when everyone spilled into the streets when the venues closed, so we were lucky that there was not more trouble. I saw the street pastors once tonight, they really are good, they came down to do 1st Aid on a chap who was bleeding but did not know how he got the injury. We will have to see how Saturday goes, if I get time I will pop another blog on. My duty for VCS is a 12hr duty, 1830hrs to 0630hrs, but often I am still sorting out files and reports until 0630hrs – and by then all I want to do is go home. Anyway that’s where I will be in a few hours, grab a paper on the way home and sit down with a glass of red before bed.
See you later
Dick
Back to work and there was quite a bit to catch up on. We have had the incident where a man was assaulted in Northam, went to hospital but was later found dead in Shirley. There have been several meetings in Northam regarding this and a lot of activity from our colleagues in the major crime team.
On Tuesday we had the St Marys PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting and had the best attendance we have had for this meeting with 18 people coming along. Only one of the Community Priorities were changed. The drug litter issues in the bin area of Carpathia Drive was changed back to nuisance at the football cage in James St. Following the last meeting we spoke to the management of the Deanery Estate and they put locks on the door to the bin area at Carpathia Drive which seems to have reduced that problem, although we think the users may be using somewhere else on the estate now. James St cage has been on and off for months. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before – it is a football facility and people use it for football (most of the time) but they are noisy and it is in close proximity to some flats. The other priorities of youth nuisance on Holyrood Estate and drug issues at Albion Towers play area were retained. The youth nuisance group in Holyrood – well actually they are more like young adults – the 16-19 age group – have been frequently particular properties that are causing problems and we are working with the council to try to sort that out. This group, which consists of people from all over the city, have been committing crime in various parts of the city, so have lots of officers chasing them. Three have been arrested and remanded in custody, several others arrested and on bail so we will keep chasing them.
This weekend is my VCS (Violent Crime Strategy) duty again. Tonight, Friday, was actually not a bad duty. We only had one arrest relating to the night time economy. That was a young girl arrested for being drunk and incapable in Town Quay. She was found lying on the ground, totally out of it. The officers wanted to take her home, but she refused all details, so in she came. Most venues closed by two o’clock and only a few were happy with the numbers of customers. It’s a hard time for them aswell. Of course, we are more than happy with this situation, although there was a nasty feeling in the air when everyone spilled into the streets when the venues closed, so we were lucky that there was not more trouble. I saw the street pastors once tonight, they really are good, they came down to do 1st Aid on a chap who was bleeding but did not know how he got the injury. We will have to see how Saturday goes, if I get time I will pop another blog on. My duty for VCS is a 12hr duty, 1830hrs to 0630hrs, but often I am still sorting out files and reports until 0630hrs – and by then all I want to do is go home. Anyway that’s where I will be in a few hours, grab a paper on the way home and sit down with a glass of red before bed.
See you later
Dick
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
On leave until August 9th
Hello,
I am just writing this as I tidy up to go leave tonight. The team have busy busy with a variety of stuff today - PC Sharon Conway had an arrest to make following a forensic hit at a cannabis factory she found on a warrant a few weeks ago. The arrest was made and more stuff was found at this premises, that will keep her busy for a while. PC Jeanette Denton did an Op Stop (where we stop vehicles to talk to drivers at locations that have been brought to our notice) at Chapel where people have complained of speeding vehicles due to the diversion with Central Bridge being closed. She did the operation with several PCSOs and assisted by a PC from the rsponse team - and they ended up issuing 6 tickets for various offences.
Last night we had the St Marys PACT meeting. The community priorities were changed to youth groups in Holyrood Estate, drug use in and around Albion Towers Play Area and Drug use in the bin area of Carpathia Drive. The meeting was well attended and we had some good discussions. We have spoken to some of the other agencies to try to solve these issues - or certainly reduce them.
That is it - a short one tonight, I am off on leave and will update once I am back on 9 August
Cheers
Dick
I am just writing this as I tidy up to go leave tonight. The team have busy busy with a variety of stuff today - PC Sharon Conway had an arrest to make following a forensic hit at a cannabis factory she found on a warrant a few weeks ago. The arrest was made and more stuff was found at this premises, that will keep her busy for a while. PC Jeanette Denton did an Op Stop (where we stop vehicles to talk to drivers at locations that have been brought to our notice) at Chapel where people have complained of speeding vehicles due to the diversion with Central Bridge being closed. She did the operation with several PCSOs and assisted by a PC from the rsponse team - and they ended up issuing 6 tickets for various offences.
Last night we had the St Marys PACT meeting. The community priorities were changed to youth groups in Holyrood Estate, drug use in and around Albion Towers Play Area and Drug use in the bin area of Carpathia Drive. The meeting was well attended and we had some good discussions. We have spoken to some of the other agencies to try to solve these issues - or certainly reduce them.
That is it - a short one tonight, I am off on leave and will update once I am back on 9 August
Cheers
Dick
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Moving on to custody
Hello again, Well I had some news this week that I am being posted – I have to do my stint in the custody cells. I was due to go down there about 8 years ago, did my custody course – the lot, but the beat Sgts job for Central came up and I volunteered for that. The rest is history as they say as I have been here ever since. However they are running out of Sgts for the cells – and as I have not done my bit, I have to now. It will be a shame to go, as I really enjoy my role at the moment, and how it has developed over the years. I would like to think that I have done a decent job. There are some real achievements that we have made. When I arrived we had loads of drugs problems in Albion Towers with several known dealers. We worked with residents, particularly Chris Morris and the Housing office to sort that out, and we rewarded when the Constabulary submitted our report to the Tilley Awards for problem solving policing. We introduced the vulnerable vehicle scheme to Southampton. This is where if the officers see any items on display in cars, we take full details and send a letter to the registered owner to advise them that their car could have been at risk from thieves. We have done thousands of letters, indeed my team have sent over 400 this year. We started the first Junior PCSO schemes – these have spread throughout the county now and there are several schemes sprung up in Thames Valley, Met Police, Surrey and other areas as a result of our initiative. There is DVD about the Junior PCSO scheme on YouTube. We had the first street briefing in Southampton – at Lumpy Lane. There is also the Tag rugby initiative we started last year which resulted in taking 24 kids from St Marys and Mt Pleasant schools to Twickenham for the curtain raiser before the England v Argentina game. A lot has happened.
I am on my custody course most of September, then in October it is down to the big dark hole!! I am not sure if the blog will be passed on to my replacement or whether I shall carry on – but reporting from the cells. If you have any views on that – please comment and let me know.
Work wise, things are much the same. As a result of the unfortunate case a few months ago when a lady committed suicide with her daughter after suffering long term anti social behaviour, we have a new process to identify these cases. There is a risk assessment form that we complete in respect to people who regularly complain about anti social behaviour. I am confident that my team would have identified these people anyway, and supported them. Currently we have completed 3 of the risk assessments within Northam and St Marys. We share the results with the council and other agencies to ensure there is a joint response and that the people get the right support.
As I write this blog, it’s just after 1am on a Sunday morning as I am on my nights weekend, policing the night time economy in the city centre. Remarkably, we have had no arrests so far, and it is a very busy night, particularly in the Bedford Place area. Last night we ended up with 6 prisoners, and I cannot remember the last time we got this late without a prisoner. That does not mean we have not been busy though. You may have heard of a new scheme launched in the city centre called the yellow card scheme. The idea is that anyone caught being a nuisance, rowdy, drunken behaviour can be issued a yellow card. If they get a second yellow card in 12 months, they are banned from all the venues in the city centre that are involved in the scheme. It started at the beginning of June and so far there have been over 50 yellow cards issued, although only one person has received 2. The scheme is run by the council and yellow cards can be issued by anyone in the scheme including door staff and police. Apparently it has been very successful in Brighton, so we will see what happens. We have had about 6 yellow cards so far tonight.
Well it is 5am now. The town has gone quiet and the officers are back in, writing up the evening. We ended up with just 4 prisoners. One chap for possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, a drink driver in Leisure World, a chap for breach of the peace at the Travel Inn (why won’t they just shut up and go to bed!!) and finally a drunk and disorderly in Onslow Rd. That really is amazing considering the number of people out and about tonight.
Noticeably tonight, there were lots of soldiers out, they are happy to tell you they are soldiers now. I did 21 years in the Army, while we had the troubles of Northern Ireland, and back then no-one went around saying they were in the Army – although the hair cuts gave it away a bit – as everyone else had long hair!!
Anyway, that’s about it for tonight, I shall write up my report for night time operation, then home about 6.30 when I finish. I will get a Sunday paper to read about Argentina v Germany (the England result against Germany does not look so bad now does it!), a couple glasses of red, and bed.
Cheers
Dick
I am on my custody course most of September, then in October it is down to the big dark hole!! I am not sure if the blog will be passed on to my replacement or whether I shall carry on – but reporting from the cells. If you have any views on that – please comment and let me know.
Work wise, things are much the same. As a result of the unfortunate case a few months ago when a lady committed suicide with her daughter after suffering long term anti social behaviour, we have a new process to identify these cases. There is a risk assessment form that we complete in respect to people who regularly complain about anti social behaviour. I am confident that my team would have identified these people anyway, and supported them. Currently we have completed 3 of the risk assessments within Northam and St Marys. We share the results with the council and other agencies to ensure there is a joint response and that the people get the right support.
As I write this blog, it’s just after 1am on a Sunday morning as I am on my nights weekend, policing the night time economy in the city centre. Remarkably, we have had no arrests so far, and it is a very busy night, particularly in the Bedford Place area. Last night we ended up with 6 prisoners, and I cannot remember the last time we got this late without a prisoner. That does not mean we have not been busy though. You may have heard of a new scheme launched in the city centre called the yellow card scheme. The idea is that anyone caught being a nuisance, rowdy, drunken behaviour can be issued a yellow card. If they get a second yellow card in 12 months, they are banned from all the venues in the city centre that are involved in the scheme. It started at the beginning of June and so far there have been over 50 yellow cards issued, although only one person has received 2. The scheme is run by the council and yellow cards can be issued by anyone in the scheme including door staff and police. Apparently it has been very successful in Brighton, so we will see what happens. We have had about 6 yellow cards so far tonight.
Well it is 5am now. The town has gone quiet and the officers are back in, writing up the evening. We ended up with just 4 prisoners. One chap for possession with intent to supply Class A drugs, a drink driver in Leisure World, a chap for breach of the peace at the Travel Inn (why won’t they just shut up and go to bed!!) and finally a drunk and disorderly in Onslow Rd. That really is amazing considering the number of people out and about tonight.
Noticeably tonight, there were lots of soldiers out, they are happy to tell you they are soldiers now. I did 21 years in the Army, while we had the troubles of Northern Ireland, and back then no-one went around saying they were in the Army – although the hair cuts gave it away a bit – as everyone else had long hair!!
Anyway, that’s about it for tonight, I shall write up my report for night time operation, then home about 6.30 when I finish. I will get a Sunday paper to read about Argentina v Germany (the England result against Germany does not look so bad now does it!), a couple glasses of red, and bed.
Cheers
Dick
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Southampton Cycle Challenge
Hello again. Some of you may be aware of the Southampton Cycle challenge, organised by the Southampton City Council. We have joined as the Southampton Central Safer Neighbourhood Teams, and not doing too badly. The idea is to get as many staff as possible out and riding a bike. As part of the challenge we have arranged cycle training for all our teams so we can use the Police bikes. We have 3 marked Police bikes, and the idea is that the officers can use them to get to, and around their beats, particularly when we move to the new police station in Southern Rd, which will be further from our beats. It has been a bit of fun on the challenge and it is surprising how the miles add up. If you have not seen it, check out the webpage, there is a week of the challenge left.
Still with cycling – we are continuing with the enforcement of cycling on the pavement, across the Itchen Bridge. PCSO Dave Wright issued another 3 tickets during the week, but we are still getting complaints. I have spoken to the Council about some possible improvements, like a drop kerb at the end of the cycle path from Basepoint to encourage cyclists on to the bridge rather than staying on the pavement. We will continue to enforce and educate, assisted by our colleagues from Bitterne, on their side of the bridge. This is a community priority, as decided at the last St Mary’s PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting at the beginning of June. Another of the priorities was children getting on the roofs of premises in the Basepoint business area. PCSO Ed Wiggans has identified some children, and spoke to them and their parents. Hopefully that will reduce some of the problems. He has also spoken to some of the businesses to see if we can reduce the opportunity to access the roofs. The 3rd priority for St Mary’s is the sheer volume of traffic passing through Chapel now that Central Bridge is closed. It makes crossing Chapel Rd very difficult for parents and children, particularly on the school run. Councillor Sarah Bogle is on the case.
In Northam we still have the community priority for no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. That will probably go on and on as there are so many offenders all the time. Anti Social Behaviour as Princes Court is still ongoing, but we are making inroads with the particular problem flat. The tenant is well aware of all the complaints, and it is down to him now, otherwise he may find himself losing the flat. Regarding the priority of vulnerable people being bullied by youths, I visited 3 Somali families recently and they seem happy that the instances are reducing. Again, we have the names of the main antagonists and will be doing things to try to stop them.
On a down side, we have been getting few robberies and incidents on Central Bridge and around that area. One incident a few weeks ago was very high profile when the lad was attacked on his bike. We have identified some suspects for that incident and there have been some arrests. There is also another group – a bit younger, who had been committing crime in Woolston. Sgt Moray Anderson, who runs the safer neighbourhood Team in Woolston has done some work on them, and now it seems they have crossed to out patch. Needless to say, we will be doing some work to try to deter them over here.
Finally commiserations to PCSO Ed Wiggans. He has passed all the interviews to join the Constabulary as a police officer, only to be that due the budget cuts, there is a ban on recruiting. On the plus side, it means I keep him longer though. If you have any comments on anything in the blog – or would like anything included, please let me know – there ahs not been a comment for ages, and ages, and ages
Cheers
Dick
Still with cycling – we are continuing with the enforcement of cycling on the pavement, across the Itchen Bridge. PCSO Dave Wright issued another 3 tickets during the week, but we are still getting complaints. I have spoken to the Council about some possible improvements, like a drop kerb at the end of the cycle path from Basepoint to encourage cyclists on to the bridge rather than staying on the pavement. We will continue to enforce and educate, assisted by our colleagues from Bitterne, on their side of the bridge. This is a community priority, as decided at the last St Mary’s PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting at the beginning of June. Another of the priorities was children getting on the roofs of premises in the Basepoint business area. PCSO Ed Wiggans has identified some children, and spoke to them and their parents. Hopefully that will reduce some of the problems. He has also spoken to some of the businesses to see if we can reduce the opportunity to access the roofs. The 3rd priority for St Mary’s is the sheer volume of traffic passing through Chapel now that Central Bridge is closed. It makes crossing Chapel Rd very difficult for parents and children, particularly on the school run. Councillor Sarah Bogle is on the case.
In Northam we still have the community priority for no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. That will probably go on and on as there are so many offenders all the time. Anti Social Behaviour as Princes Court is still ongoing, but we are making inroads with the particular problem flat. The tenant is well aware of all the complaints, and it is down to him now, otherwise he may find himself losing the flat. Regarding the priority of vulnerable people being bullied by youths, I visited 3 Somali families recently and they seem happy that the instances are reducing. Again, we have the names of the main antagonists and will be doing things to try to stop them.
On a down side, we have been getting few robberies and incidents on Central Bridge and around that area. One incident a few weeks ago was very high profile when the lad was attacked on his bike. We have identified some suspects for that incident and there have been some arrests. There is also another group – a bit younger, who had been committing crime in Woolston. Sgt Moray Anderson, who runs the safer neighbourhood Team in Woolston has done some work on them, and now it seems they have crossed to out patch. Needless to say, we will be doing some work to try to deter them over here.
Finally commiserations to PCSO Ed Wiggans. He has passed all the interviews to join the Constabulary as a police officer, only to be that due the budget cuts, there is a ban on recruiting. On the plus side, it means I keep him longer though. If you have any comments on anything in the blog – or would like anything included, please let me know – there ahs not been a comment for ages, and ages, and ages
Cheers
Dick
Thursday, 17 June 2010
The World Cup and Anti Social Behaviour campaign
Well, it is World Cup time, and that means extra duties for us. There is a whole operation around policing the World Cup, with specific patrols on the days that England play. That will be particularly interesting for Friday night, which gets busy with the Violent Crime Strategy anyway. If the weather stays fine, that will mean even more people out and about. So while we hope England go all the way, it does cause us extra work.
As mentioned last week, you may be aware of the Chief Constables Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) campaign. It was run last year, and reported ASB went down about 17% across Hampshire. Fortunately we do not suffer too much from ASB during the summer. I think that is mainly due to the work that has gone on in the past, and still going on, providing activities for youngsters after school and during the holidays. This will include the Summer Activity programme we do with Saints in the Community. The scheme caters for kids 5-15yrs of age, with activities Monday to Thursday from 10am to 3pm at St Marys School playing field. Last year we had 200 children registered, so we are hoping for the same or even more this year. A variety of agencies are involved on top of Saints and the Police. We have Catch 22, Hampshire FA, Solent University and others. On top of that the youth clubs will be open as usual, which provides activities after 3pm. We are getting along further with the planning for the Tag Rugby project with Hampshire RFU on Thursday evenings at St Marys School from 5-6pm.
Regarding the ASB campaign, we will be supported by a host of police staff and ‘office wallers’ who will don their uniform and come out to assist with our activities. Alternatively, we will be holding more of the gazebo events in Hoglands Park, to advise youngsters about crime safety and security mark bikes and phones. There are also ASB operations with the Roads Policing Unit tackling nuisance drivers and vehicles, where often my officers will assist. So all in all it will be a busy time.
During the last week we have held a couple of operations at Itchen Bridge regarding cyclists riding on the pavement. Bitterne police did their end and we have done our end. The first few operations were warning people, and that seems to have made a difference. From warning over 25 people on the first day, it reduced to about 12 the following operation, and when we decided to ticket on the third operation, there were only 2 tickets issued. We will continue to these operations at irregular intervals. The anti social behaviour at Princes Court in Northam has reduced a bit although there was a party there again last weekend. We have had a joint visit with the council to warn the tenant that their tenancy is in jeopardy, so hopefully that will do the trick. .PC Dave Houghton has cracked the 90 mark for the number of tickets issued to offenders at the Prince of Wales junction – he is aiming for well over the ton for the rolling 12 months.
That is about it for now, more next week
Cheers
Dick
As mentioned last week, you may be aware of the Chief Constables Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) campaign. It was run last year, and reported ASB went down about 17% across Hampshire. Fortunately we do not suffer too much from ASB during the summer. I think that is mainly due to the work that has gone on in the past, and still going on, providing activities for youngsters after school and during the holidays. This will include the Summer Activity programme we do with Saints in the Community. The scheme caters for kids 5-15yrs of age, with activities Monday to Thursday from 10am to 3pm at St Marys School playing field. Last year we had 200 children registered, so we are hoping for the same or even more this year. A variety of agencies are involved on top of Saints and the Police. We have Catch 22, Hampshire FA, Solent University and others. On top of that the youth clubs will be open as usual, which provides activities after 3pm. We are getting along further with the planning for the Tag Rugby project with Hampshire RFU on Thursday evenings at St Marys School from 5-6pm.
Regarding the ASB campaign, we will be supported by a host of police staff and ‘office wallers’ who will don their uniform and come out to assist with our activities. Alternatively, we will be holding more of the gazebo events in Hoglands Park, to advise youngsters about crime safety and security mark bikes and phones. There are also ASB operations with the Roads Policing Unit tackling nuisance drivers and vehicles, where often my officers will assist. So all in all it will be a busy time.
During the last week we have held a couple of operations at Itchen Bridge regarding cyclists riding on the pavement. Bitterne police did their end and we have done our end. The first few operations were warning people, and that seems to have made a difference. From warning over 25 people on the first day, it reduced to about 12 the following operation, and when we decided to ticket on the third operation, there were only 2 tickets issued. We will continue to these operations at irregular intervals. The anti social behaviour at Princes Court in Northam has reduced a bit although there was a party there again last weekend. We have had a joint visit with the council to warn the tenant that their tenancy is in jeopardy, so hopefully that will do the trick. .PC Dave Houghton has cracked the 90 mark for the number of tickets issued to offenders at the Prince of Wales junction – he is aiming for well over the ton for the rolling 12 months.
That is about it for now, more next week
Cheers
Dick
Monday, 7 June 2010
Cheerio to the PCSOs and a Cannabis Factory
Hello again, apologies for the delay in updating the blog, but things have been a bit hectic.
First of all, it is cheerio to PCSO Kelly Drodge and PCSO Mark Reynolds. Both are leaving us as they have been accepted as police officers, and start their training at Netley later this month. I have mentioned both in the blog before, Mark started with us back in 2007 and was allocated to Northam. He was the first PCSO to have a street briefing, regarding the problems in Lumpy Lane. As a result we started the first Junior PCSO scheme in Hampshire – which has led to many schemes throughout the county, and further afield. Other achievements include being influential in the painting of the stadium footbridge and the erection of the fencing at Radcliffe Rd Industrial Court. Kelly joined us about 2 years ago, moving from the Waterfront beat to take over St Marys. She has worked really hard in Golden Grove, particularly with St Marys School. Kelly has also been running the Deanery Junior PCSO scheme. Both will be sorely missed, not just by me, but by many in the community. We wish them all the best of luck with their police careers.
On with the everyday stuff, and several residents in Kings House recently complained about a strong smell of cannabis from one flat. PCSO Ed Wiggans and Dave Wright popped along and both reported a significant ‘whiff’ and submitted intelligence. We gained a drug warrant and last week PC Sharon Conway led an operation to execute the warrant. What a result – we found a cannabis factory. All the hydroponics, rooms converted to planting areas, a good result.
Back to our youth involvement, I have been liaising with Jazz Bhatti of Saints in the Community and we are planning the summer activity programme again. This will take place for 4 weeks in the summer holidays at St Mary’s school field, for children within SO14, and will run from 10am to 3pm. Hopefully it will be as successful as previous years in keeping juvenile nuisance down to a minimum. We will be providing at least 2 staff a day.
We also hope to launch the Southampton Street Rugby project with Nicola Vaughan of Hampshire Rugby Football Union. This is a project aimed at children within central Southampton from 7yrs upwards, planned to meet on a Thursday 5-pm at St Marys school playing fields from 8 July for 8 weeks. Again we will supply some officers, as we have some who have been trained as tag coaches, and some coaches from the RFU. We will be holding taster sessions at the youth clubs to supplement the tag sessions at the school.
It is all go isn’t it?..and that’s without neighbourhood issues. The community priorities for Northam have been updated and at the latest PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting several residents reported bullying to vulnerable people by some youths. So we are taking that one on and are looking at getting the vulnerable group together. There is also anti social behaviour from one flat in Princes Court, so we are working with the council to sort that one out. People in St Marys have complained about cycling on the pavement on the Itchen Bridge so we are doing a couple of operations with Bitterne police to enforce the regulations and issue a few tickets. It will keep us on out toes, and of course we have the Chief Constables Anti Social Behaviour campaign starting again. I will give some of the results in the next blog, which I will try to post a little earlier than this one.
Please let us know of any comments and concerns.
Cheers
Dick
First of all, it is cheerio to PCSO Kelly Drodge and PCSO Mark Reynolds. Both are leaving us as they have been accepted as police officers, and start their training at Netley later this month. I have mentioned both in the blog before, Mark started with us back in 2007 and was allocated to Northam. He was the first PCSO to have a street briefing, regarding the problems in Lumpy Lane. As a result we started the first Junior PCSO scheme in Hampshire – which has led to many schemes throughout the county, and further afield. Other achievements include being influential in the painting of the stadium footbridge and the erection of the fencing at Radcliffe Rd Industrial Court. Kelly joined us about 2 years ago, moving from the Waterfront beat to take over St Marys. She has worked really hard in Golden Grove, particularly with St Marys School. Kelly has also been running the Deanery Junior PCSO scheme. Both will be sorely missed, not just by me, but by many in the community. We wish them all the best of luck with their police careers.
On with the everyday stuff, and several residents in Kings House recently complained about a strong smell of cannabis from one flat. PCSO Ed Wiggans and Dave Wright popped along and both reported a significant ‘whiff’ and submitted intelligence. We gained a drug warrant and last week PC Sharon Conway led an operation to execute the warrant. What a result – we found a cannabis factory. All the hydroponics, rooms converted to planting areas, a good result.
Back to our youth involvement, I have been liaising with Jazz Bhatti of Saints in the Community and we are planning the summer activity programme again. This will take place for 4 weeks in the summer holidays at St Mary’s school field, for children within SO14, and will run from 10am to 3pm. Hopefully it will be as successful as previous years in keeping juvenile nuisance down to a minimum. We will be providing at least 2 staff a day.
We also hope to launch the Southampton Street Rugby project with Nicola Vaughan of Hampshire Rugby Football Union. This is a project aimed at children within central Southampton from 7yrs upwards, planned to meet on a Thursday 5-pm at St Marys school playing fields from 8 July for 8 weeks. Again we will supply some officers, as we have some who have been trained as tag coaches, and some coaches from the RFU. We will be holding taster sessions at the youth clubs to supplement the tag sessions at the school.
It is all go isn’t it?..and that’s without neighbourhood issues. The community priorities for Northam have been updated and at the latest PACT (Partners and Community Together) meeting several residents reported bullying to vulnerable people by some youths. So we are taking that one on and are looking at getting the vulnerable group together. There is also anti social behaviour from one flat in Princes Court, so we are working with the council to sort that one out. People in St Marys have complained about cycling on the pavement on the Itchen Bridge so we are doing a couple of operations with Bitterne police to enforce the regulations and issue a few tickets. It will keep us on out toes, and of course we have the Chief Constables Anti Social Behaviour campaign starting again. I will give some of the results in the next blog, which I will try to post a little earlier than this one.
Please let us know of any comments and concerns.
Cheers
Dick
Monday, 17 May 2010
PACT Meetings – (Partners and Community Together)
Hello,
Hampshire Constabulary are the same as most organisations in that once everyone is aware of the names of meetings and procedures – it’s time to change them. This has happened with the meetings we use to identify the 3 Community Priorities. Logically, the meetings were called Community Priority Setting Meetings – does what it says on the tin really. Anyway – because these meetings were called different names throughout the county, there is a new name now – they are called PACT meetings (Partners and Community Together). We have had PACT meetings now for both Northam and St Marys. Unfortunately the St Marys PACT only attracted 4 people to the meeting last Tuesday, and only 2 of those were residents. Nevertheless it was a good meeting as those that did attend stated they thought they were very useful as we had managed to sort out the problems that had been brought to the meeting quite promptly, and if there were not the meetings, then those problems would not have been sorted out.
As such the St Marys PACT struggled with any new priorities, so we kept the same ones. These are:
Double parking in St Mary St – where we have issued 6 tickets now,
Youth Nuisance on Holyrood Estate – that has improved following good liaison between the youth leader, housing and ourselves with one particular address
Drug issues in Golden Grove – We have completed 2 positive drug warrants in Golden Grove in the last month. However, the very next morning after the PACT meeting we received emails from a resident complaining about cyclists using the pavement on the Itchen Bridge. Oh, if only these people had come to the PACT it would have been something to discuss…. and new people there as well. We advertise the meeting in the Echo, posters in all the blocks and I send out the invite to an email list of several hundred. Still, I guess that if there is a big problem that affects lots of people, then at least some of them would come along. Mind, I suppose it also shows that we are accessible to people if they have concerns, either at meetings, by phone, email or letter. If anyone has any ideas how I can get more people to come along – then please let me know.
PC Jeanette Denton organised her drug operation at some of the Halls of Residence on Monday. We were supported by the Halls managers and had a drugs dog that ran around the Halls with such vigour that only drugs dogs do. The dogs really enjoy their work and scamper around sniffing everything. The dog identified several rooms. Although no drugs were found it send a message to the students that drugs would not be tolerated in the Halls. We will be doing more operations in the future.
We had the Northam Patch Chat on Wednesday. This is a closed meeting attended by the police, Housing providers and community representatives. We discussed everything from the planned improvements called ‘Decent Neighbourhoods spend’ where it is planned to improve parking, play areas etc to anti social behaviour and dog mess. These are quarterly meetings and we also hold them in Kingsland, Golden Grove and Holyrood.
Well, that's it for now
Cheers
Dick
Hampshire Constabulary are the same as most organisations in that once everyone is aware of the names of meetings and procedures – it’s time to change them. This has happened with the meetings we use to identify the 3 Community Priorities. Logically, the meetings were called Community Priority Setting Meetings – does what it says on the tin really. Anyway – because these meetings were called different names throughout the county, there is a new name now – they are called PACT meetings (Partners and Community Together). We have had PACT meetings now for both Northam and St Marys. Unfortunately the St Marys PACT only attracted 4 people to the meeting last Tuesday, and only 2 of those were residents. Nevertheless it was a good meeting as those that did attend stated they thought they were very useful as we had managed to sort out the problems that had been brought to the meeting quite promptly, and if there were not the meetings, then those problems would not have been sorted out.
As such the St Marys PACT struggled with any new priorities, so we kept the same ones. These are:
Double parking in St Mary St – where we have issued 6 tickets now,
Youth Nuisance on Holyrood Estate – that has improved following good liaison between the youth leader, housing and ourselves with one particular address
Drug issues in Golden Grove – We have completed 2 positive drug warrants in Golden Grove in the last month. However, the very next morning after the PACT meeting we received emails from a resident complaining about cyclists using the pavement on the Itchen Bridge. Oh, if only these people had come to the PACT it would have been something to discuss…. and new people there as well. We advertise the meeting in the Echo, posters in all the blocks and I send out the invite to an email list of several hundred. Still, I guess that if there is a big problem that affects lots of people, then at least some of them would come along. Mind, I suppose it also shows that we are accessible to people if they have concerns, either at meetings, by phone, email or letter. If anyone has any ideas how I can get more people to come along – then please let me know.
PC Jeanette Denton organised her drug operation at some of the Halls of Residence on Monday. We were supported by the Halls managers and had a drugs dog that ran around the Halls with such vigour that only drugs dogs do. The dogs really enjoy their work and scamper around sniffing everything. The dog identified several rooms. Although no drugs were found it send a message to the students that drugs would not be tolerated in the Halls. We will be doing more operations in the future.
We had the Northam Patch Chat on Wednesday. This is a closed meeting attended by the police, Housing providers and community representatives. We discussed everything from the planned improvements called ‘Decent Neighbourhoods spend’ where it is planned to improve parking, play areas etc to anti social behaviour and dog mess. These are quarterly meetings and we also hold them in Kingsland, Golden Grove and Holyrood.
Well, that's it for now
Cheers
Dick
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Bank Holiday Washout and Tenancy Agreement
Hello again,
Well, that was a typical Bank Holiday weekend – my BBQ, probably like many others, stayed in the shed, but at least I did not need to water the garden.
Coming back in after a long weekend means we have even more incidents to review when we get in. Overall it was not too bad for Northam and St Marys, in keeping with the recent trend. There was a bit of youth nuisance reported in Northam. A family that used to live in the area have been re-housed back here again and the same youths have started congregating around. We are working with the housing provider to try to sort out the problems. The housing providers are often key to sorting out anti social behaviour within our area. It is generally part of the tenancy agreement that the householder is responsible for the behaviour of those who live at the address and visitors. Quite often when we get complaints of anti-social behaviour other residents are fearful of putting pen to paper for fear of retribution. However, the housing providers can use anonymous statements. As you can imagine, this makes things much easier, and working with the housing providers we can provide information to top up theirs, often to go for repossession, or at least to serve a notice to the householder that we are looking at seeking possession - this is called a NOSP – Notice of Seeking Possession. We regularly have joint visits with the housing providers to try to sort out problems, and have had considerable success with this route.
On Tuesday we had another first. We have a new police volunteer. He is a young lad who has volunteered to help us run the Junior PCSO Scheme. He is hoping to gather experience to help him join the police and is going to help PCSO Mark Reynolds with the Lumpy Lane juniors. If this works out it will be great. It will add some more continuity to the leaders who run the juniors – and enables us to supply just one PCSO for the scheme rather that two. This is particularly useful on a Tuesday (when we have the Lumpy lane group) as we also run tag rugby on a Tuesday afternoon at St Marys School and that takes another two officers.
It was also the Northam Community Priority Setting Meeting on Tuesday. PC Mark Shepherd, who will be joining us in August as PC Phil Warwicks replacement (he left in September last year) was on duty, so he asked to pop along. It gives him an idea of what we do and also the opportunity to meet some of the people of Northam. Quite a good little introduction. At the meeting it was decided to close the priority regarding vehicles illegally turning right from Hilda Place into Northam Rd and was replaced by anti social being caused from a flat in Princes Court, and another flat - but not quite so bad, in Princes House. Funnily enough,considering I have already mentioned the tenancy agreements, this is another case where we can put pressure on the tenant via the tenancy agreement. It is of course the coucil that will take the lead as this is a council flat. We have already done several joint visits to the tenant so he is well aware of the concerns, and this now looks like the next step. That is one of the positive things about the Community Priority Setting Meetings - it is the community that gets to say what they want us to work on, the residents have their say. Anyway, in this case we are already aware and are working on it and although tenancy action can be a slow process we can now say we have the backing of other residents to take action. The next Northam meeting will be Tuesday 1 June as there is a Bank Holiday on the Monday. The next St Marys Community Priority Setting Meeting is next Tuesday.
Well, thats about it for another week, please let me have your thoughts and comments on the blog and anything you would like me to cover in the future
Cheers
Dick
Well, that was a typical Bank Holiday weekend – my BBQ, probably like many others, stayed in the shed, but at least I did not need to water the garden.
Coming back in after a long weekend means we have even more incidents to review when we get in. Overall it was not too bad for Northam and St Marys, in keeping with the recent trend. There was a bit of youth nuisance reported in Northam. A family that used to live in the area have been re-housed back here again and the same youths have started congregating around. We are working with the housing provider to try to sort out the problems. The housing providers are often key to sorting out anti social behaviour within our area. It is generally part of the tenancy agreement that the householder is responsible for the behaviour of those who live at the address and visitors. Quite often when we get complaints of anti-social behaviour other residents are fearful of putting pen to paper for fear of retribution. However, the housing providers can use anonymous statements. As you can imagine, this makes things much easier, and working with the housing providers we can provide information to top up theirs, often to go for repossession, or at least to serve a notice to the householder that we are looking at seeking possession - this is called a NOSP – Notice of Seeking Possession. We regularly have joint visits with the housing providers to try to sort out problems, and have had considerable success with this route.
On Tuesday we had another first. We have a new police volunteer. He is a young lad who has volunteered to help us run the Junior PCSO Scheme. He is hoping to gather experience to help him join the police and is going to help PCSO Mark Reynolds with the Lumpy Lane juniors. If this works out it will be great. It will add some more continuity to the leaders who run the juniors – and enables us to supply just one PCSO for the scheme rather that two. This is particularly useful on a Tuesday (when we have the Lumpy lane group) as we also run tag rugby on a Tuesday afternoon at St Marys School and that takes another two officers.
It was also the Northam Community Priority Setting Meeting on Tuesday. PC Mark Shepherd, who will be joining us in August as PC Phil Warwicks replacement (he left in September last year) was on duty, so he asked to pop along. It gives him an idea of what we do and also the opportunity to meet some of the people of Northam. Quite a good little introduction. At the meeting it was decided to close the priority regarding vehicles illegally turning right from Hilda Place into Northam Rd and was replaced by anti social being caused from a flat in Princes Court, and another flat - but not quite so bad, in Princes House. Funnily enough,considering I have already mentioned the tenancy agreements, this is another case where we can put pressure on the tenant via the tenancy agreement. It is of course the coucil that will take the lead as this is a council flat. We have already done several joint visits to the tenant so he is well aware of the concerns, and this now looks like the next step. That is one of the positive things about the Community Priority Setting Meetings - it is the community that gets to say what they want us to work on, the residents have their say. Anyway, in this case we are already aware and are working on it and although tenancy action can be a slow process we can now say we have the backing of other residents to take action. The next Northam meeting will be Tuesday 1 June as there is a Bank Holiday on the Monday. The next St Marys Community Priority Setting Meeting is next Tuesday.
Well, thats about it for another week, please let me have your thoughts and comments on the blog and anything you would like me to cover in the future
Cheers
Dick
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Funeral of Firefighter Alan Bannon
Unfortunately today we had one of those tours of duty that no-one wants. The tragic loss of firefighters Alan Bannon and James Shears earlier in April was well publicised and today was Alan’s funeral. I was allocated as Officer in Charge for the policing of the funeral and had 6 motorcycle officers, 2 cycle officers and 6 PCs and PCSOs. It was a very sad occasion, but Alan had a full Hampshire Fire and Rescue Honours funeral. The cortege started at Hightown Fire Station, went to Alan’s home and then on to St Mary’s Fire Station where he was stationed. After tributes at the fire station, the cortege walked to St Mary’s Church for the service. As you can imagine we had to stop traffic at various places to allow the cortege uninterrupted passage, particularly difficult around Six Dials. The road management system people took manual control of the traffic lights at Six Dials to stop all traffic as the cortege went though. One of the problems with this sort of control is that people often try to find alternative routes around and then cause blockage. So we anticipated this and put in extra blocks and advice. After the service the cortege went off to the Crematorium. From the policing perspective everything seemed to go well and particular thanks to the motorcycle officers who are always excellent at completing these sorts of operations. It is just a great shame that it had to be done. There was a lot of local support, people lining the streets and outside the church to pay their respects which was reassuring. Our thoughts are with Alan’s family, friends and colleagues.
Whilst many people will think that the Fire and Rescue Service work closely with the team, we are particularly close with St Mary’s Fire Station. Last year all out team did a day’s attachment with the firefighters, and we have had a few firefighters come out on patrol with us to help understand each others role. Some firefighters have come with us to residents meetings where they are able to get their home safety message across. We did some traffic operations in St Mary Street earlier in the year and some firefighters attended and spoke to drivers about the results of crashes etc. St Mary’s Fire Station is within our Sector, so it is a useful tea stop, and probably more importantly a loo stop!
Talking of traffic operations, we planned one for Chapel this week, however an emergency prevented a full operation, but one of the targets was a scooter which had been identified as having no insurance. Fortunately, just as a couple of the officers planned for the operation got down to Chapel the scooter came out to play – game on, got stopped and seized. The rider is off to court and I think has lost his scooter – so a good result anyway.
We also did a drug warrant in James St following reports of dealing. Unfortunately no drugs were found but one person was arrested for another matter. One of the things we have found useful is to leaflet the area after a warrant. This lets people know what the police have been doing and often leads to more information as people realise we will act stuff we are told.
Next week we have the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting at 7pm on Tuesday 4 May in the Northam Tenants office and then of course is the election on Thursday. I have drawn the short straw again as I was on lates, and been put on a 6pm to 3am shift to cover the results of the election.
Rock on next week – have a good Bank Holiday
Cheers
Dick
Whilst many people will think that the Fire and Rescue Service work closely with the team, we are particularly close with St Mary’s Fire Station. Last year all out team did a day’s attachment with the firefighters, and we have had a few firefighters come out on patrol with us to help understand each others role. Some firefighters have come with us to residents meetings where they are able to get their home safety message across. We did some traffic operations in St Mary Street earlier in the year and some firefighters attended and spoke to drivers about the results of crashes etc. St Mary’s Fire Station is within our Sector, so it is a useful tea stop, and probably more importantly a loo stop!
Talking of traffic operations, we planned one for Chapel this week, however an emergency prevented a full operation, but one of the targets was a scooter which had been identified as having no insurance. Fortunately, just as a couple of the officers planned for the operation got down to Chapel the scooter came out to play – game on, got stopped and seized. The rider is off to court and I think has lost his scooter – so a good result anyway.
We also did a drug warrant in James St following reports of dealing. Unfortunately no drugs were found but one person was arrested for another matter. One of the things we have found useful is to leaflet the area after a warrant. This lets people know what the police have been doing and often leads to more information as people realise we will act stuff we are told.
Next week we have the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting at 7pm on Tuesday 4 May in the Northam Tenants office and then of course is the election on Thursday. I have drawn the short straw again as I was on lates, and been put on a 6pm to 3am shift to cover the results of the election.
Rock on next week – have a good Bank Holiday
Cheers
Dick
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Vaisakhi Parade and St Mary St Traders Association
Hello,
Well it looks like summer has arrived – well for a few days anyway. I guess we are fortunate that it has coincided with the second week of the school holidays. We have been lucky again that we have not suffered from an increase in juvenile nuisance over the holidays. Many places, especially the inner city estates get increases, and that’s what the Chief Constables Summer Anti Social Behaviour campaign will be all about. As I said though, for the last couple of years we have not seen any great increase. I think this is down to a number of things, particularly the various agencies working together to provide diversionary activities for youngsters. The youth clubs within Northam and St Marys arrange activities, and Saints in the Community always have something going on. We work closely with them and support them, particularly in the summer holidays. Because of this we know many of the children, and again I think that helps.
One thing we always do at the beginning of the school holidays from Easter to the October half term is our ‘Hoglands gazebo’. There used to be a rise in reported crime in Hoglands Park during school holidays. The crimes were generally thefts from clothes and bags left around while youngsters use the skate park and play sports, to assaults and robberies. The gazebo event is about the Police having a visible presence in the park, speak to the park users, advise them about personal safety and crime prevention. We security mark mobiles, bikes, skateboards etc and generally try to make people more aware of what is happening around them. This seems to work well, and PCs Caroline Woodfield and Dave Houghton did events on April 3 and 4.
On Monday I attended the St Mary St Traders Association. Basically a group that does what it says on the tin! They are looking to improve the area, particularly Old Northam Rd which is looking the worse for wear at the moment. Unfortunately not many businesses attend the meetings, but the West Itchen Trust is assisting and hopefully the group will flourish as improvements are made.
Tuesday evening saw the St Marys Community Priority Setting Meeting which we hold o the second Tuesday of each month at Central Hall. We had 11 people attend, thanks to 3 new attendees from James St Church. It was decided to drop the priority of street drinking in Kingsland Sq, although of course we will still deal with any drinkers we find there, and this was replaced with youth nuisance on Holyrood Estate. Well, we say youth nuisance, but the group are actually past school leaving age, they are 17-19yr olds. I have spoken to youth services about any engagement they can have, but the reports are of the group hanging around, being intimidating. We will get a few operations together and take as robust action as we can on any we find committing offences.
As a sign of the times – and a bit of answer to ‘What do PCSOs do?’ – I have 2 PCSO on duty today and they are both at court at witnesses. It is becoming a bit of a habit now of the PCSO being witnesses, although not often called to court. These two PCSO identified some offenders from CCTV. Because the PCSO are out in the community so much, they get to know everyone quite well, particularly the criminals, and therefore are really useful when we are trying to identify people. So that’s really good and I hope they get a good result.
Finally it was the Vaisakhi Festival this weekend. It’s a really colourful event where the Sikh community come together to celebrate the birth of the Sikh nation in 1699 when Guru Gobind Singh completed the foundation of the faith. There was a huge parade this year, probably helped by the nice weather, that started at the Cranbury Ave Gurdwara, visited the other Gurdwaras and had a procession around the city centre. If you have not been to one, it’s something that you should not miss, even if it’s just to find a point on the parade and watch it go past. It was led by some of the elders and had martial arts displays with weapons that were really impressive. Like a marathon, there are food and drink stops all around the route, so we had our fill of curry and assorted food. Very nice and thanks to the Sikh community for the hospitality.
On that note – take care and see you next week.
Cheers
Dick
Well it looks like summer has arrived – well for a few days anyway. I guess we are fortunate that it has coincided with the second week of the school holidays. We have been lucky again that we have not suffered from an increase in juvenile nuisance over the holidays. Many places, especially the inner city estates get increases, and that’s what the Chief Constables Summer Anti Social Behaviour campaign will be all about. As I said though, for the last couple of years we have not seen any great increase. I think this is down to a number of things, particularly the various agencies working together to provide diversionary activities for youngsters. The youth clubs within Northam and St Marys arrange activities, and Saints in the Community always have something going on. We work closely with them and support them, particularly in the summer holidays. Because of this we know many of the children, and again I think that helps.
One thing we always do at the beginning of the school holidays from Easter to the October half term is our ‘Hoglands gazebo’. There used to be a rise in reported crime in Hoglands Park during school holidays. The crimes were generally thefts from clothes and bags left around while youngsters use the skate park and play sports, to assaults and robberies. The gazebo event is about the Police having a visible presence in the park, speak to the park users, advise them about personal safety and crime prevention. We security mark mobiles, bikes, skateboards etc and generally try to make people more aware of what is happening around them. This seems to work well, and PCs Caroline Woodfield and Dave Houghton did events on April 3 and 4.
On Monday I attended the St Mary St Traders Association. Basically a group that does what it says on the tin! They are looking to improve the area, particularly Old Northam Rd which is looking the worse for wear at the moment. Unfortunately not many businesses attend the meetings, but the West Itchen Trust is assisting and hopefully the group will flourish as improvements are made.
Tuesday evening saw the St Marys Community Priority Setting Meeting which we hold o the second Tuesday of each month at Central Hall. We had 11 people attend, thanks to 3 new attendees from James St Church. It was decided to drop the priority of street drinking in Kingsland Sq, although of course we will still deal with any drinkers we find there, and this was replaced with youth nuisance on Holyrood Estate. Well, we say youth nuisance, but the group are actually past school leaving age, they are 17-19yr olds. I have spoken to youth services about any engagement they can have, but the reports are of the group hanging around, being intimidating. We will get a few operations together and take as robust action as we can on any we find committing offences.
As a sign of the times – and a bit of answer to ‘What do PCSOs do?’ – I have 2 PCSO on duty today and they are both at court at witnesses. It is becoming a bit of a habit now of the PCSO being witnesses, although not often called to court. These two PCSO identified some offenders from CCTV. Because the PCSO are out in the community so much, they get to know everyone quite well, particularly the criminals, and therefore are really useful when we are trying to identify people. So that’s really good and I hope they get a good result.
Finally it was the Vaisakhi Festival this weekend. It’s a really colourful event where the Sikh community come together to celebrate the birth of the Sikh nation in 1699 when Guru Gobind Singh completed the foundation of the faith. There was a huge parade this year, probably helped by the nice weather, that started at the Cranbury Ave Gurdwara, visited the other Gurdwaras and had a procession around the city centre. If you have not been to one, it’s something that you should not miss, even if it’s just to find a point on the parade and watch it go past. It was led by some of the elders and had martial arts displays with weapons that were really impressive. Like a marathon, there are food and drink stops all around the route, so we had our fill of curry and assorted food. Very nice and thanks to the Sikh community for the hospitality.
On that note – take care and see you next week.
Cheers
Dick
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Back on line and Volunteers
We have had a bit of a problem getting into the blog, hence no updates for a dew weeks - but as you can see whe are back on again. Hopefully there will be no repeats!!
You may have seen it advertised about volunteers working for the Police. This is not Special Constables, but members of the public, who once checked out, can work with us. We have a volunteer for the Safer Neighbourhood Teams for Northam, Newtown and St Marys. Her name is Helen and she is a student at Southampton University. Helen comes in for about 4 hrs once a week and helps us out with administrative tasks. She will do things like the vulnerable vehicle letters, juvenile nuisance letters and updating some our IT records for visits and engagements, compile our newsletters and other stuff. It’s very interesting for students who are doing courses in law or similar. If you would like to volunteer, details are on the Constabulary website.
Talking about the vulnerable vehicle scheme, I can explain that. When the team are out on patrol, they will keep an eye on cars and if they see a car with items on display, they will take full details, what the item is, type and registration of the car, time, date location etc. When they get back to the station they will complete a check to identify the registered owner and write a letter to them, explaining what they have seen. Just to give you an idea, we have sent over 450 letters in the last year. In fact I was at a local residents association meeting last month when a man mentioned he had received one of the letters. As his sat nav kept falling off the dashboard, he had glued it on. On receiving the letter, he realized the potential risk and removed it – so that was really positive feedback. We also send out letters for people using their mobile phones and for abusing the traffic directions in Northam if we cannot stop them.
PCSO Dave Wright has been really busy recently with his engagement at City College. He started off with a weekly surgery there on Thursday lunchtimes. This progressed into some sessions in class where he could tell students the roles of PC and PCSO and it’s now moved on to talking about the whole legal system. He has just come back with some great photos of a presentation he did with some students who have learning difficulties. The students had the opportunity to try on the body armour etc and really enjoyed themselves. We are starting to do a lot at the College and that’s helping to break down many of the barriers between the Police and some students.
Another new initiative is working with the Society of St James and their female refugee group. The Society do loads of stuff to help the ladies integrate into British life and have asked us to pop along and give an input about policing. This will be great for us, as some of the refugee communities, particularly the female side - are very difficult to engage with.
That’s about it for this week, and a bit different from the normal meetings, meetings and more meetings – I can mention them again next time! Have a great Easter.
Cheers
Dick
You may have seen it advertised about volunteers working for the Police. This is not Special Constables, but members of the public, who once checked out, can work with us. We have a volunteer for the Safer Neighbourhood Teams for Northam, Newtown and St Marys. Her name is Helen and she is a student at Southampton University. Helen comes in for about 4 hrs once a week and helps us out with administrative tasks. She will do things like the vulnerable vehicle letters, juvenile nuisance letters and updating some our IT records for visits and engagements, compile our newsletters and other stuff. It’s very interesting for students who are doing courses in law or similar. If you would like to volunteer, details are on the Constabulary website.
Talking about the vulnerable vehicle scheme, I can explain that. When the team are out on patrol, they will keep an eye on cars and if they see a car with items on display, they will take full details, what the item is, type and registration of the car, time, date location etc. When they get back to the station they will complete a check to identify the registered owner and write a letter to them, explaining what they have seen. Just to give you an idea, we have sent over 450 letters in the last year. In fact I was at a local residents association meeting last month when a man mentioned he had received one of the letters. As his sat nav kept falling off the dashboard, he had glued it on. On receiving the letter, he realized the potential risk and removed it – so that was really positive feedback. We also send out letters for people using their mobile phones and for abusing the traffic directions in Northam if we cannot stop them.
PCSO Dave Wright has been really busy recently with his engagement at City College. He started off with a weekly surgery there on Thursday lunchtimes. This progressed into some sessions in class where he could tell students the roles of PC and PCSO and it’s now moved on to talking about the whole legal system. He has just come back with some great photos of a presentation he did with some students who have learning difficulties. The students had the opportunity to try on the body armour etc and really enjoyed themselves. We are starting to do a lot at the College and that’s helping to break down many of the barriers between the Police and some students.
Another new initiative is working with the Society of St James and their female refugee group. The Society do loads of stuff to help the ladies integrate into British life and have asked us to pop along and give an input about policing. This will be great for us, as some of the refugee communities, particularly the female side - are very difficult to engage with.
That’s about it for this week, and a bit different from the normal meetings, meetings and more meetings – I can mention them again next time! Have a great Easter.
Cheers
Dick
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Blog analytics.. that's technical!!
Hello again,
I have been checking the analytics of the blog again and am pleased to say that the monthly average number of visits to the blog is up about 140 a month now. That’s really good, and it’s about a 50/50 split on new visitors and returning visitors. So if you are returning visitor – thanks for coming back and would be great if you could send some comments to let me know what you think and anything that you would like included. For the new visitors – welcome and I hope you become repeat visitors. The average time spent on the blog is over a minute – and when you think of how much can be read in a minute – that’s very good really. The best in the current month is a visitor from New York state in the USA – on their first visit that spent over 30 minutes on the blog. Also visits from Brazil, Ireland, Australia and Germany.
Yesterday we had the St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting at Central Hall. Although only 7 people attended, there was some good discussion regarding the concerns and worries. You may remember that one of the Community Priorities for St Marys was anti social behaviour related to unemployed people. I had gained details from the Council about the Worklessness project and the have schemes in Woolston and Harefield looking at getting people back to work. There is also the SAFE project and that currently has a scheme running at James St Church. Mandy from the church gave us some information about that. So there is a lot going on.
In fact this priority was closed as we have some ideas of schemes, and the homeless drinkers in Holyrood priority was also closed, due to a couple of chaps being arrested and the problem has reduced. In their place, the two new priorities were agreed as Drug Dealing and activity at the rear of block 122 Golden Grove and Street Drinking in Kingsland Square. These will both be dealt with by way of increased and directed patrols to the area and stop checking/searching people and enforcement of the drinking zone regulations. Pretty straight forward priorities for us. The neighbourhood Wardens will also assist with the drugs as they can report any drug related litter etc.
I think I mentioned that several of my PCSO have applied to join as police officers now that recruiting has started again. Well, it is no surprise that they are starting to be accepted. PCSO Kelly Drodge has been accepted, subject to her medical and the others have their assessments coming up this month. Good luck to them all and hopefully we will get replacements in quickly so we can continue with all our engagement.
I visited the Pupil Referral Unit in the Melborne Centre last week which caters for some of the older kids out of mainstream education. Obviously there are some challenging individuals there, and staff are keen to get us to pop in and be part of the school. PCSO Mark Reynolds has often visited in the past and done sports with some of them, but hopefully the plan is to have a bit more of a forum type engagement and help to break some barriers between the kids and the police. Many of the children here have had plenty of contact with the Police, but often not friendly.
Finally, earlier today we had another meeting about the new Police Station. I am the ‘move champion’ for the Safer Neighbourhood Teams, looking to ensure we get the facilities etc that we need. The new station is coming on well, and hopefully this time next year we will be there. Let’s see…
Till next time
Cheers
Dick
I have been checking the analytics of the blog again and am pleased to say that the monthly average number of visits to the blog is up about 140 a month now. That’s really good, and it’s about a 50/50 split on new visitors and returning visitors. So if you are returning visitor – thanks for coming back and would be great if you could send some comments to let me know what you think and anything that you would like included. For the new visitors – welcome and I hope you become repeat visitors. The average time spent on the blog is over a minute – and when you think of how much can be read in a minute – that’s very good really. The best in the current month is a visitor from New York state in the USA – on their first visit that spent over 30 minutes on the blog. Also visits from Brazil, Ireland, Australia and Germany.
Yesterday we had the St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting at Central Hall. Although only 7 people attended, there was some good discussion regarding the concerns and worries. You may remember that one of the Community Priorities for St Marys was anti social behaviour related to unemployed people. I had gained details from the Council about the Worklessness project and the have schemes in Woolston and Harefield looking at getting people back to work. There is also the SAFE project and that currently has a scheme running at James St Church. Mandy from the church gave us some information about that. So there is a lot going on.
In fact this priority was closed as we have some ideas of schemes, and the homeless drinkers in Holyrood priority was also closed, due to a couple of chaps being arrested and the problem has reduced. In their place, the two new priorities were agreed as Drug Dealing and activity at the rear of block 122 Golden Grove and Street Drinking in Kingsland Square. These will both be dealt with by way of increased and directed patrols to the area and stop checking/searching people and enforcement of the drinking zone regulations. Pretty straight forward priorities for us. The neighbourhood Wardens will also assist with the drugs as they can report any drug related litter etc.
I think I mentioned that several of my PCSO have applied to join as police officers now that recruiting has started again. Well, it is no surprise that they are starting to be accepted. PCSO Kelly Drodge has been accepted, subject to her medical and the others have their assessments coming up this month. Good luck to them all and hopefully we will get replacements in quickly so we can continue with all our engagement.
I visited the Pupil Referral Unit in the Melborne Centre last week which caters for some of the older kids out of mainstream education. Obviously there are some challenging individuals there, and staff are keen to get us to pop in and be part of the school. PCSO Mark Reynolds has often visited in the past and done sports with some of them, but hopefully the plan is to have a bit more of a forum type engagement and help to break some barriers between the kids and the police. Many of the children here have had plenty of contact with the Police, but often not friendly.
Finally, earlier today we had another meeting about the new Police Station. I am the ‘move champion’ for the Safer Neighbourhood Teams, looking to ensure we get the facilities etc that we need. The new station is coming on well, and hopefully this time next year we will be there. Let’s see…
Till next time
Cheers
Dick
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
New Community Priority for Northam
Hello
I had a really busy weekend as it was my nights weekend again, dealing with the Night Time Economy. Friday night was not too bad, but Saturday was very busy. Being the end of the month is payday weekend, and that always means more people out and about. Unfortunately the rain did not help us, sometimes it does help people to go home, but Saturday it made no difference to the revellers – but we got soaked. Our Chief Inspector – Alison Scott, came out with me on Saturday night as well. And without prompting, the staff at Aqua Lounge mentioned that they read my blog – thanks – that impressed her! I had a long report to write after Saturday night, we had concerns over some door staff and also with the road works that the council are doing in Above Bar St. They had left paving slabs all over the place so we were lucky none got thrown around. We also went into Bliss to have a look around, checked out their CCTV etc. It’s a long time since I have been into a nightclub – and now I know why! I am getting too old for all that noise, so dark you cannot see where you are – give me a nice old country pub and a pint of real ale anytime! Still, that’s my nights done for a few weeks.
I was straight back in for Monday, as we had the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting. It was decided to close the priority regarding dog mess – the council are dealing with this issue anyway, and it was raised about people turning right out of Northam estate at Hilda Place onto Northam Rd. That’s another traffic issue for us to look at. That means all the community priorities for Northam are traffic related. Plenty of opportunity for tickets for PC Dave Houghton – he has done over 50 since November. In fact it is quite pleasing that there are no bigger community issues that are being passed our way.
Monday we also had the St Marys Traders Association meeting. They are looking at ways of regenerating Old Northam Rd and St Mary St and are trying to get support from all the traders. The West Itchen Trust is also involved, and while the Association is getting off the ground slowly, there is progress. Last weekend we had 2 burglaries in the business premises of Old Northam Rd, there was someone arrested for one of the burglaries.
The CCTV in the blocks in Holyrood is working well. We were called by them last week regarding a young man urinating in the lift. The CCTV is very good now, and we were able to identify him, and he was issued with n £80 fixed penalty notice – that’s not exactly spending a penny!! Anyway the message will get around that the CCTV is good and that we are working with the council to deal with incidents of anti social behaviour.
Team wise, I will probably be losing some of my PCSO soon. Four of them have applied to join the Constabulary as Police Officers and are going through their final interviews. Whilst I wish them well with their futures, it will leave a huge hole in experience within the team. It takes a while to recruit new PCSO as well, so we will probably be holding a few vacancies in a few months.
I have the Golden Grove patch chat on Tuesday afternoon, then tag at St Marys School. I am off to have a chat with the head teacher at the Melbourne centre (Pupil Referral Unit) on Wednesday regarding some closer working, and of course next Tuesday we have the St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting. The team have the 4 Junior PCSO sessions to run, so it’s all go.
Cheers
Dick
I had a really busy weekend as it was my nights weekend again, dealing with the Night Time Economy. Friday night was not too bad, but Saturday was very busy. Being the end of the month is payday weekend, and that always means more people out and about. Unfortunately the rain did not help us, sometimes it does help people to go home, but Saturday it made no difference to the revellers – but we got soaked. Our Chief Inspector – Alison Scott, came out with me on Saturday night as well. And without prompting, the staff at Aqua Lounge mentioned that they read my blog – thanks – that impressed her! I had a long report to write after Saturday night, we had concerns over some door staff and also with the road works that the council are doing in Above Bar St. They had left paving slabs all over the place so we were lucky none got thrown around. We also went into Bliss to have a look around, checked out their CCTV etc. It’s a long time since I have been into a nightclub – and now I know why! I am getting too old for all that noise, so dark you cannot see where you are – give me a nice old country pub and a pint of real ale anytime! Still, that’s my nights done for a few weeks.
I was straight back in for Monday, as we had the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting. It was decided to close the priority regarding dog mess – the council are dealing with this issue anyway, and it was raised about people turning right out of Northam estate at Hilda Place onto Northam Rd. That’s another traffic issue for us to look at. That means all the community priorities for Northam are traffic related. Plenty of opportunity for tickets for PC Dave Houghton – he has done over 50 since November. In fact it is quite pleasing that there are no bigger community issues that are being passed our way.
Monday we also had the St Marys Traders Association meeting. They are looking at ways of regenerating Old Northam Rd and St Mary St and are trying to get support from all the traders. The West Itchen Trust is also involved, and while the Association is getting off the ground slowly, there is progress. Last weekend we had 2 burglaries in the business premises of Old Northam Rd, there was someone arrested for one of the burglaries.
The CCTV in the blocks in Holyrood is working well. We were called by them last week regarding a young man urinating in the lift. The CCTV is very good now, and we were able to identify him, and he was issued with n £80 fixed penalty notice – that’s not exactly spending a penny!! Anyway the message will get around that the CCTV is good and that we are working with the council to deal with incidents of anti social behaviour.
Team wise, I will probably be losing some of my PCSO soon. Four of them have applied to join the Constabulary as Police Officers and are going through their final interviews. Whilst I wish them well with their futures, it will leave a huge hole in experience within the team. It takes a while to recruit new PCSO as well, so we will probably be holding a few vacancies in a few months.
I have the Golden Grove patch chat on Tuesday afternoon, then tag at St Marys School. I am off to have a chat with the head teacher at the Melbourne centre (Pupil Referral Unit) on Wednesday regarding some closer working, and of course next Tuesday we have the St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting. The team have the 4 Junior PCSO sessions to run, so it’s all go.
Cheers
Dick
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Junior PCSO DVD launch and Saints/Pompey arrests.
Hello again,
Well, quite an eventful week to report on. It all started last Saturday with the Saints v Pompey match, which unfortunately Saints lost. Although I guess Pompey have enough problems anyway. As expected, there was some trouble which resulted in arrests. However there were several people charged with offences, off to court and sentenced this week, which is very quick. Four people received 3 year football banning orders with a range of fines from £135 to £350, two people received fines of £100 and £150 and two more people pleaded not guilty and will be sent to trial. This is prompt justice and just the message that needed to go out. As far as I am aware there were very few, if any, concerns from the community.
I had a few days off, being half term, so only got back to work on Thursday and therefore missed most of the details – but had a few lovely days up in Shropshire, a bit of walking and sampling some fine ale.
Back here on Thursday and it was the launch of the Junior PCSO DVD that Swaythling Housing have funded and arranged. This was held at the harbour Lights cinema. There were representatives from the Junior PCSO schemes not only in Central, but also Mansbridge and Hythe. Quite a few of the juniors turned up and were really well behaved and we were privileged with the presence of the Chief Constable. Unfortunately the projectionist was late which disrupted the chain of events, however it went very well overall and was a success. Particular thanks go to Jade Missen of Swathing Housing, who basically arranged the whole thing, well done. There are copies of the video available for anyone who is thinking of starting up a scheme.
On Thursday afternoon we had the Kingsland Patch Chat. This is a multi agency meeting led by Housing which looks at issues within Kingsland Estate and is chaired by Helen Prophett, the local housing manager. We are very fortunate in Kingsland at the moment that there are no major issues – in fact no police issues at all. However, this does mean that we can concentrate on some of the community issues and support other agencies in Kingsland.
You may notice a comment on last weeks blog – excellent, please, please send more. Nigel has asked about some of the details of the presentation that Sgt Andy Williams and I did to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in London last year. The NPIA hold many seminars and workshops, and Andy and I were invited to hold workshops on our community engagement. We had 4 groups come through representing Police Forces from all around London and South East England. Much of our presentation centrered around the ways we try to engage with our communities, and the fact that the areas and needs of Northam, Newtown and St Marys vary from each other. An example was that Northam is quite easy to engage with as the main residential area is the Estate, and there is an active Residents Association. There is also only one patch chat for Northam. On the other hand, St Marys has four Residents Associations (five when Chapel is active) and three patch chats. We also have several Halls of Residence for the students. Certainly from our aspect, it is all about getting the PCs and PCSOs out in the community talking to people, identifying the concerns and doing something about those concerns. We now have the monthly Community Priority Setting Meetings for Northam and St Marys, so that gives us another way of getting that information. Andy and I also talked about the youth engagement, Junior PCSO schemes, summer activities programme with Saints and of course now we also have the tag rugby at St Marys School and Mount Pleasant School.
There has been an increase in reported burglaries this year, particularly business premises. There was actually an arrest for a burglary last night in the patch and we will be targeting those that we think are responsible. If anyone has concerns about crime prevention advice, please contact us and we can arrange for one of the team or a Crime Reduction Officer to visit.
Cheers
Dick
Well, quite an eventful week to report on. It all started last Saturday with the Saints v Pompey match, which unfortunately Saints lost. Although I guess Pompey have enough problems anyway. As expected, there was some trouble which resulted in arrests. However there were several people charged with offences, off to court and sentenced this week, which is very quick. Four people received 3 year football banning orders with a range of fines from £135 to £350, two people received fines of £100 and £150 and two more people pleaded not guilty and will be sent to trial. This is prompt justice and just the message that needed to go out. As far as I am aware there were very few, if any, concerns from the community.
I had a few days off, being half term, so only got back to work on Thursday and therefore missed most of the details – but had a few lovely days up in Shropshire, a bit of walking and sampling some fine ale.
Back here on Thursday and it was the launch of the Junior PCSO DVD that Swaythling Housing have funded and arranged. This was held at the harbour Lights cinema. There were representatives from the Junior PCSO schemes not only in Central, but also Mansbridge and Hythe. Quite a few of the juniors turned up and were really well behaved and we were privileged with the presence of the Chief Constable. Unfortunately the projectionist was late which disrupted the chain of events, however it went very well overall and was a success. Particular thanks go to Jade Missen of Swathing Housing, who basically arranged the whole thing, well done. There are copies of the video available for anyone who is thinking of starting up a scheme.
On Thursday afternoon we had the Kingsland Patch Chat. This is a multi agency meeting led by Housing which looks at issues within Kingsland Estate and is chaired by Helen Prophett, the local housing manager. We are very fortunate in Kingsland at the moment that there are no major issues – in fact no police issues at all. However, this does mean that we can concentrate on some of the community issues and support other agencies in Kingsland.
You may notice a comment on last weeks blog – excellent, please, please send more. Nigel has asked about some of the details of the presentation that Sgt Andy Williams and I did to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in London last year. The NPIA hold many seminars and workshops, and Andy and I were invited to hold workshops on our community engagement. We had 4 groups come through representing Police Forces from all around London and South East England. Much of our presentation centrered around the ways we try to engage with our communities, and the fact that the areas and needs of Northam, Newtown and St Marys vary from each other. An example was that Northam is quite easy to engage with as the main residential area is the Estate, and there is an active Residents Association. There is also only one patch chat for Northam. On the other hand, St Marys has four Residents Associations (five when Chapel is active) and three patch chats. We also have several Halls of Residence for the students. Certainly from our aspect, it is all about getting the PCs and PCSOs out in the community talking to people, identifying the concerns and doing something about those concerns. We now have the monthly Community Priority Setting Meetings for Northam and St Marys, so that gives us another way of getting that information. Andy and I also talked about the youth engagement, Junior PCSO schemes, summer activities programme with Saints and of course now we also have the tag rugby at St Marys School and Mount Pleasant School.
There has been an increase in reported burglaries this year, particularly business premises. There was actually an arrest for a burglary last night in the patch and we will be targeting those that we think are responsible. If anyone has concerns about crime prevention advice, please contact us and we can arrange for one of the team or a Crime Reduction Officer to visit.
Cheers
Dick
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Out the Cup and St Marys new Priorities.
Hello again,
Well our Safer Neighbourhood football team looked splendid in the Saints kit on Wednesday evening, in the first round of the Constabulary Cup, however that’s where our comparison with Saints excellent cup run stopped. In the frozen wastes of Andover we were stuffed 6 – 0. Due to my increasing years and lack of football talent I was left to run the line until the last 10 minutes or so, when they felt sorry for the old man and let me on. A fair reflection on the difference between the teams was that our keeper, PC Paul Ground (a fellow Saga member) was probably our man of the match. Anyway, the gaffer, Sgt Andy Williams is washing the kit and handing it back to Saints who kindly loaned it to us.
Talking of Saints, firstly, congratulations on getting to Wembley, and now for the FA Cup and Pompey. Needless to say, there will plenty of police on duty for the game. Community wise, we have 3 pairs of Safer Neighbourhood Team officers completing community reassurance around Northam, Newtown and St Marys. We have visited the pubs to see what their plans are for the day. If anyone has any concerns please contact the Constabulary on 0845 045 4545 we can take any details. We will also have Sgt Andy Williams and Insp Doug Ashman on duty for community cohesion.
On Tuesday we had the first Community Priority Setting meeting for St Marys. Twelve people attended and represented Albion Towers, Golden Grove, Kingsland and Holyrood. The current problems were discussed and the new Community priorities were agreed. These are: Homeless drinkers sleeping rough in Holyrood Estate, Double parking in St Mary St and vehicle obstruction in Jonas Nichols Sq, and finally anti social behaviour related to unemployed people – particularly in Golden Grove. The latter is quite interesting as is a government project called the ‘Worklessness project’ which covers this sort of thing. If you have any thoughts on the priorities please leave a comment, it would be great to get feedback from readers.
Finally, we have recently agreed Acceptable Behaviour Contracts with two youngsters in St Marys. These are a set of rules that the children agree to in an effort to keep them out of trouble. Unfortunately one has already been broken twice – and it was only started on Monday. Never mind, we will keep trying and also get the support in for the parents.
That’s it for now, see you next week
Cheers
Dick
Well our Safer Neighbourhood football team looked splendid in the Saints kit on Wednesday evening, in the first round of the Constabulary Cup, however that’s where our comparison with Saints excellent cup run stopped. In the frozen wastes of Andover we were stuffed 6 – 0. Due to my increasing years and lack of football talent I was left to run the line until the last 10 minutes or so, when they felt sorry for the old man and let me on. A fair reflection on the difference between the teams was that our keeper, PC Paul Ground (a fellow Saga member) was probably our man of the match. Anyway, the gaffer, Sgt Andy Williams is washing the kit and handing it back to Saints who kindly loaned it to us.
Talking of Saints, firstly, congratulations on getting to Wembley, and now for the FA Cup and Pompey. Needless to say, there will plenty of police on duty for the game. Community wise, we have 3 pairs of Safer Neighbourhood Team officers completing community reassurance around Northam, Newtown and St Marys. We have visited the pubs to see what their plans are for the day. If anyone has any concerns please contact the Constabulary on 0845 045 4545 we can take any details. We will also have Sgt Andy Williams and Insp Doug Ashman on duty for community cohesion.
On Tuesday we had the first Community Priority Setting meeting for St Marys. Twelve people attended and represented Albion Towers, Golden Grove, Kingsland and Holyrood. The current problems were discussed and the new Community priorities were agreed. These are: Homeless drinkers sleeping rough in Holyrood Estate, Double parking in St Mary St and vehicle obstruction in Jonas Nichols Sq, and finally anti social behaviour related to unemployed people – particularly in Golden Grove. The latter is quite interesting as is a government project called the ‘Worklessness project’ which covers this sort of thing. If you have any thoughts on the priorities please leave a comment, it would be great to get feedback from readers.
Finally, we have recently agreed Acceptable Behaviour Contracts with two youngsters in St Marys. These are a set of rules that the children agree to in an effort to keep them out of trouble. Unfortunately one has already been broken twice – and it was only started on Monday. Never mind, we will keep trying and also get the support in for the parents.
That’s it for now, see you next week
Cheers
Dick
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Youth Nuisance and plans for the Saints game
Well, we had the Stadium Monitoring Group meeting at St Marys last Wednesday, and it was very interesting. Good to Saints are in healthy position now, and noticeable that they are one of a very few teams who are actually buying players at the moment. There are obviously a lot of arrangements being made towards the FA Cup against Portsmouth. We have been visiting pubs in the area to see what their plans are and speaking to people in the community to identify any concerns. We had thought of having a Community Advice Group to meet and discuss issues, but most people feel that there is no need, and that as long as the key members in the community have police contact, then that will be fine. If you have any concerns or worries, or indeed hear of anything that you think the police may be interested in regarding the match, please let us know.
We have been suffering a small amount of youth nuisance recently in St Marys. On Friday evening there was a report of a group being a nuisance in James St and the team got down there and found them. The kids were all spoken to, and some taken home. W will be sending letters to the parents. I keep a copy and we share this information with the Safer Communities team from the Council and also inform Housing or the social landlord if applicable. This is because it is in the tenancy agreement that people should behave in the local area, and the parents, as tenants would be responsible for the actions of their children. This generally works very well, and we support the kids and parents as much as we can. As it happens, we agreed our first Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) for about a year with a child on Friday. The lad has come to our notice a few times, and has also been arrested. The idea of the ABC is to agree a code of conduct, a few rules, for the child. The agreement is generally with the police, housing provider, child and parent. They seem to work quite well. It lasts for 6 months but can be reviewed at any time. We will have another 2 to do in the next week or so.
This coming week we have the Northam tenants and Residents association meeting, the Kingsland Resident meeting and I am planning for the first St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting on 9 February at Central Hall. I have had several people volunteer to be part of the Community Priority Panel, so fingers crossed it will all go OK.
Well, back to the planning for 13 February…..
Cheers
Dick
We have been suffering a small amount of youth nuisance recently in St Marys. On Friday evening there was a report of a group being a nuisance in James St and the team got down there and found them. The kids were all spoken to, and some taken home. W will be sending letters to the parents. I keep a copy and we share this information with the Safer Communities team from the Council and also inform Housing or the social landlord if applicable. This is because it is in the tenancy agreement that people should behave in the local area, and the parents, as tenants would be responsible for the actions of their children. This generally works very well, and we support the kids and parents as much as we can. As it happens, we agreed our first Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) for about a year with a child on Friday. The lad has come to our notice a few times, and has also been arrested. The idea of the ABC is to agree a code of conduct, a few rules, for the child. The agreement is generally with the police, housing provider, child and parent. They seem to work quite well. It lasts for 6 months but can be reviewed at any time. We will have another 2 to do in the next week or so.
This coming week we have the Northam tenants and Residents association meeting, the Kingsland Resident meeting and I am planning for the first St Marys Community Priority Setting meeting on 9 February at Central Hall. I have had several people volunteer to be part of the Community Priority Panel, so fingers crossed it will all go OK.
Well, back to the planning for 13 February…..
Cheers
Dick
Monday, 25 January 2010
Saints draw Pompey in the FA Cup
Hello,
Well this is the big news of the week – Saints v Pompey again, and over Valentines weekend too! As it happens, that is the weekend of the Chinese New Year aswell. Obviously with having St Marys Stadium on our patch this game will have some impact on us. I can remember the last time we played Pompey at St Marys, and the Safer Neighbourhood Team were all involved in community patrols all afternoon. As then, I expect the Constabulary will gain some of those impressive police horses to escort the Pompey fans from and back to the train station. I also have the Stadium Monitoring Group meeting this week, so that will be interesting and this game will obviously raise some issues at that meeting. Since the club got took over last year, these meetings have been really positive and long may that continue. The meeting is attended by community representatives from Northam, Newtown, St Marys, Woolston and Bitterne as well as councillors and council representatives for transport and community cohesion. It is an interesting meeting and gives an insight into some of the running of the club.
We work very closely with Saints in the Community – particularly with the summer activities programme that I have mentioned before and we are starting to plan for this years programme. In fact the contact with them is very useful. The Constabulary has an annual football tournament, and we as the Southampton Central Safer Neighbourhood Teams have entered a team, and Saints have kindly lent us an old kit – hopefully their luck in the recent cup competitions will rub off on us!! We are away to Basingstoke.
As I mentioned in the last blog – I will talk a little more about the community priorities – and this time it’s Northam.
Priority 1 is the enforcement of the no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. There have been several accidents here over the years as traffic illegally comes from Union Rd or Princes St into Northam Rd towards the City Centre. There is little we can do, other than enforce the law – so PC Dave Houghton spends some time there every day, and has issued over 30 tickets since November.
Priority 2 is vehicles travelling the wrong way around Kent St. This is mainly from the parking area in front of Clyde House around to Graham St. Again, this is an enforcement only thing really – people know they are breaking the law and Dave will be targeting them aswell. However, unlike the Prince of Wales junction where offenders do not see Dave until they have committed the offence, in Kent St they will probably see him first, and therefore go around Kent St properly.
Priority 3 is dog mess on the estate. This priority has been passed to the Council to deal with. As it happens, dogs in flats has been one of the issues on the patch chat for some time, so the council are working on this already.
The priorities will be discussed at the next Tenants and Residents meeting on 1 February and then we have the full community priority setting meeting on 2 March. If you would like to be part of this process, and influence what happens in Northam please let me know and come along to the meetings.
Well, that’s it till next time
Cheers
Dick
Well this is the big news of the week – Saints v Pompey again, and over Valentines weekend too! As it happens, that is the weekend of the Chinese New Year aswell. Obviously with having St Marys Stadium on our patch this game will have some impact on us. I can remember the last time we played Pompey at St Marys, and the Safer Neighbourhood Team were all involved in community patrols all afternoon. As then, I expect the Constabulary will gain some of those impressive police horses to escort the Pompey fans from and back to the train station. I also have the Stadium Monitoring Group meeting this week, so that will be interesting and this game will obviously raise some issues at that meeting. Since the club got took over last year, these meetings have been really positive and long may that continue. The meeting is attended by community representatives from Northam, Newtown, St Marys, Woolston and Bitterne as well as councillors and council representatives for transport and community cohesion. It is an interesting meeting and gives an insight into some of the running of the club.
We work very closely with Saints in the Community – particularly with the summer activities programme that I have mentioned before and we are starting to plan for this years programme. In fact the contact with them is very useful. The Constabulary has an annual football tournament, and we as the Southampton Central Safer Neighbourhood Teams have entered a team, and Saints have kindly lent us an old kit – hopefully their luck in the recent cup competitions will rub off on us!! We are away to Basingstoke.
As I mentioned in the last blog – I will talk a little more about the community priorities – and this time it’s Northam.
Priority 1 is the enforcement of the no left/no right turn at the Prince of Wales junction. There have been several accidents here over the years as traffic illegally comes from Union Rd or Princes St into Northam Rd towards the City Centre. There is little we can do, other than enforce the law – so PC Dave Houghton spends some time there every day, and has issued over 30 tickets since November.
Priority 2 is vehicles travelling the wrong way around Kent St. This is mainly from the parking area in front of Clyde House around to Graham St. Again, this is an enforcement only thing really – people know they are breaking the law and Dave will be targeting them aswell. However, unlike the Prince of Wales junction where offenders do not see Dave until they have committed the offence, in Kent St they will probably see him first, and therefore go around Kent St properly.
Priority 3 is dog mess on the estate. This priority has been passed to the Council to deal with. As it happens, dogs in flats has been one of the issues on the patch chat for some time, so the council are working on this already.
The priorities will be discussed at the next Tenants and Residents meeting on 1 February and then we have the full community priority setting meeting on 2 March. If you would like to be part of this process, and influence what happens in Northam please let me know and come along to the meetings.
Well, that’s it till next time
Cheers
Dick
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Visitors from Brazil and comments please
Hello again,
Well some brilliant news this week. Media have completed some analysis of the blog for December and found that there were 54 visits to the blog with 34 of them being repeat visitors. It was interesting that there were 3 visits from Brazil with one visit from each of Alaska, America, Germany and Bulgaria. The challenge I have is to get people to make comments and respond to the blog, or tell me why they do not make comments – is it because they have to register with blogspot? If that is the case, then people can email me and we can still get the comment put on. Anyway, I would be really grateful if you could tell me of anything I can put on the blog that would make you, and others respond and submit comments. One suggestion was to mention more about the Community Priorities and what we are doing about them, so I will start this week.
The first Community Priority for St Marys is Anti Social Behaviour on the footbridge from Deanery to Chapel. We have identified this as student related – mostly students form Lucia Foster halls on their way in and out of town on an evening. We have completed some late night operations and confiscated alcohol from students, and this is something we need to do again. We generally do it after students have returned from holidays. PCSO Mike Kesslar-Lyne has also arranged some police surgeries at each of the halls of Residence on our patch for the week beginning 25 January for students to discuss any issues with us.
The second community priority is anti social behaviour on ST Marys School playing field. There were reports of fires, general damage, drinking and dog fouling. We started doing extra patrols of the playing field, and particularly the copse area. A couple of youngsters were identified as causing some of the small fires, and they have been referred to the Fire Service for fire-setting courses. Some children being a nuisance were identified by PCSO Kelly Drodge and she arranged for them to attend the playing fields one Saturday morning and they did a clean up session. PCSO Dave Wright identified a dog walker and we have spoken to him. The reports have reduced and the site manager is much happier.
The third priority is cycling on the pavement, particularly St Mary St and Chapel Rd. We have completed several operations, issuing fixed penalty notices to offenders, and will continue to do these regularly. Back in October we also did an initiative with the council of stopping cyclists, advising them of road safety and issuing fluorescent bag covers.
As I write this, I am at the end of my nights’ weekend again, covering the night time economy within the city centre. It is almost six o’clock on Sunday morning. Due to Xmas and the credit crunch, weekends are not so busy at the moment, but we still managed 7 prisoners last night, and it kept us going. I have the files from the officers to check and then I should be off myself in about half an hour.
Well, that will be it for now, please send in a few comments or emails -including any questions, to hamwic.snt@hampshire.pnn.police.uk and let me know if there is anything you would particularly like me to include in the blog.
Cheers
Dick
Well some brilliant news this week. Media have completed some analysis of the blog for December and found that there were 54 visits to the blog with 34 of them being repeat visitors. It was interesting that there were 3 visits from Brazil with one visit from each of Alaska, America, Germany and Bulgaria. The challenge I have is to get people to make comments and respond to the blog, or tell me why they do not make comments – is it because they have to register with blogspot? If that is the case, then people can email me and we can still get the comment put on. Anyway, I would be really grateful if you could tell me of anything I can put on the blog that would make you, and others respond and submit comments. One suggestion was to mention more about the Community Priorities and what we are doing about them, so I will start this week.
The first Community Priority for St Marys is Anti Social Behaviour on the footbridge from Deanery to Chapel. We have identified this as student related – mostly students form Lucia Foster halls on their way in and out of town on an evening. We have completed some late night operations and confiscated alcohol from students, and this is something we need to do again. We generally do it after students have returned from holidays. PCSO Mike Kesslar-Lyne has also arranged some police surgeries at each of the halls of Residence on our patch for the week beginning 25 January for students to discuss any issues with us.
The second community priority is anti social behaviour on ST Marys School playing field. There were reports of fires, general damage, drinking and dog fouling. We started doing extra patrols of the playing field, and particularly the copse area. A couple of youngsters were identified as causing some of the small fires, and they have been referred to the Fire Service for fire-setting courses. Some children being a nuisance were identified by PCSO Kelly Drodge and she arranged for them to attend the playing fields one Saturday morning and they did a clean up session. PCSO Dave Wright identified a dog walker and we have spoken to him. The reports have reduced and the site manager is much happier.
The third priority is cycling on the pavement, particularly St Mary St and Chapel Rd. We have completed several operations, issuing fixed penalty notices to offenders, and will continue to do these regularly. Back in October we also did an initiative with the council of stopping cyclists, advising them of road safety and issuing fluorescent bag covers.
As I write this, I am at the end of my nights’ weekend again, covering the night time economy within the city centre. It is almost six o’clock on Sunday morning. Due to Xmas and the credit crunch, weekends are not so busy at the moment, but we still managed 7 prisoners last night, and it kept us going. I have the files from the officers to check and then I should be off myself in about half an hour.
Well, that will be it for now, please send in a few comments or emails -including any questions, to hamwic.snt@hampshire.pnn.police.uk and let me know if there is anything you would particularly like me to include in the blog.
Cheers
Dick
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Happy New Year and community priorities in Northam
Well, Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you all had a good Christmas. Several of us were on duty for New Years Eve for the City Centre operation, duty time was 8-5, which initially I thought was not too bad - but then found out is was 8pm to 5am New Years Day! As you can imagine it was a busy night, in fact every cell in Hampshire was filled that night. I had 5 officers to look after the bottom end of town - the High St down to Town Quay and up the St Mary St - St Marys Rd spine. Generally speaking we were not too bad, but Wahoo in the High St was at capacity with a huge queue outside in the freezing weather. The Section 27 direction to leave the area legislation was used quite a bit, ensuring some potential troublemakers were removed from the city centre before they were a real nuisance. Anyway, onwards and upwards and look forward to next year!
On Monday evening we held the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting. This was held in the Northam Tenants and Residents Office and we had a good number of people attend, including Councillors Derek Burke and Stephen Barnes-Andrews. I am really grateful for their support and that of the Housing officer and neighbourhood wardens. It was decided to drop drugs issues as a priority, the illegal left and right turning at the Prince of Wales junction was retained as a priority, and the other two priorities that were added were vehicles driving the wrong way around Kent St and dog mess on the estate. Fortunately the latter can be passed directly to the Council - but these meetings really identify the concerns of the residents and generally speaking it’s the quality of life issues that are highlighted. Once PC Dave Houghton gets back from leave he can start enforcing the traffic offences, in November and December he issued over 20 £30 tickets for the offences at the Prince of Wales junction.
We have planned a similar meeting for St Marys, and that will be held at Central Hall, St Mary St on 9 February from 6pm - 8pm. I am currently collating the names of volunteers who would like to be part of the Community Priority Panel, who will get together after the meeting to decide how we will progress with the three issues that were identifyied as the Community Priorities.
Next week we will start up the Junior PCSO schemes and tag rugby again, I hope for better weather! With the tag rugby we are planning to increase the delivery to more than St Marys school. Hopefully, we can do sessions at the youth clubs in Northam and St Marys which will provide a interest for holiday sessions, probably in the Easter School Holidays. Hampshire Rugby Football Union (RFU) have submitted funding applications and are working with us and supporting the programme.
We have reviewed the crime figures for Northam and St Marys for the last year, and the reductions have been really good, the problem now will be trying to keep them that low. For St Marys there has been a reduction of over 20% for vehicle crime, burglary and criminal damage which is great. Northam has shown even greater reductions, vehicle crime down from 157 to 62, criminal damage down from 179 to 104 and burglary down from 84 to 58. A check of those who spent time in custody during 2009 clearly shows who had been actively involved in crime in 2008, so it's a challenge for us to put them back there - or get them to change their ways for 2010.
Well that’s it for now, have a good New Year
Cheers
Dick
On Monday evening we held the Northam Community Priority Setting meeting. This was held in the Northam Tenants and Residents Office and we had a good number of people attend, including Councillors Derek Burke and Stephen Barnes-Andrews. I am really grateful for their support and that of the Housing officer and neighbourhood wardens. It was decided to drop drugs issues as a priority, the illegal left and right turning at the Prince of Wales junction was retained as a priority, and the other two priorities that were added were vehicles driving the wrong way around Kent St and dog mess on the estate. Fortunately the latter can be passed directly to the Council - but these meetings really identify the concerns of the residents and generally speaking it’s the quality of life issues that are highlighted. Once PC Dave Houghton gets back from leave he can start enforcing the traffic offences, in November and December he issued over 20 £30 tickets for the offences at the Prince of Wales junction.
We have planned a similar meeting for St Marys, and that will be held at Central Hall, St Mary St on 9 February from 6pm - 8pm. I am currently collating the names of volunteers who would like to be part of the Community Priority Panel, who will get together after the meeting to decide how we will progress with the three issues that were identifyied as the Community Priorities.
Next week we will start up the Junior PCSO schemes and tag rugby again, I hope for better weather! With the tag rugby we are planning to increase the delivery to more than St Marys school. Hopefully, we can do sessions at the youth clubs in Northam and St Marys which will provide a interest for holiday sessions, probably in the Easter School Holidays. Hampshire Rugby Football Union (RFU) have submitted funding applications and are working with us and supporting the programme.
We have reviewed the crime figures for Northam and St Marys for the last year, and the reductions have been really good, the problem now will be trying to keep them that low. For St Marys there has been a reduction of over 20% for vehicle crime, burglary and criminal damage which is great. Northam has shown even greater reductions, vehicle crime down from 157 to 62, criminal damage down from 179 to 104 and burglary down from 84 to 58. A check of those who spent time in custody during 2009 clearly shows who had been actively involved in crime in 2008, so it's a challenge for us to put them back there - or get them to change their ways for 2010.
Well that’s it for now, have a good New Year
Cheers
Dick
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