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
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
