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