I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know about some of the work that Newport Safer Neighbourhood Team have been involved in this week.
For those that don’t know, Safer Neighbourhood Teams are a team of local West Mercia Police Constables and Police Community Support Officers dedicated to serving your community.
We work closely with local authorities, community leaders and residents to decide our policing priorities for your area. This helps us to find useful, long-term solutions to local problems, while maintaining our wider focus on preventing and reducing crime, protecting the vulnerable and providing reassurance across the area we police.
The ‘Newport Safer Neighbourhood Team’ are responsible for policing across Newport, Church Aston, Chetwynd, Chetwynd Aston & Woodcote, Edgmond, Lilleshall, Preston upon the Weald Moors and Tibberton & Cherrington. This can provide our team a challenging variety of crime, anti-social behaviour and other policing issues to manage.
This week has been another challenging week with a variety of community issues to tackle. To list just some of the work we have carried out this week:
We have conducted hi-visibility patrols of Newport town centre following recent incidents. This has included visiting businesses to provide crime prevention advice and strategies. We have also signed retailers up to the DISC crime prevention system, which allows the police to share relevant information with those retailers to reduce instances of retail crime. We are also working closely with retailers to identify offenders of retail crime so they can be brought to justice. We have identified a prolific shoplifter who is travelling into Newport and other areas frequently. We have been able to coordinate between investigating officers and share that information with retailers and other policing teams so that we can ensure positive action is taken to address his offending.
We have conducted patrols across our rural communities and have also visited businesses that have been affected by crime in these areas, providing advice and crime prevention advice and strategies where appropriate. These patrols and visits allow us to build the intelligence picture within our rural communities so that we can target our patrols specifically at the time and place most needed.
We have supported victims of domestic violence, providing safeguarding advice and practical skills that will help reduce the risk of harm to victims and their families.
We have conducted ‘mischief fortnight’ patrols as this time of year (Halloween and Bonfire night) often sees an increase in anti-social behaviour. We have also visited retailers to remind them of their responsibilities around the sale of fireworks, eggs and flour etc.
We have supported victims of burglary, again providing crime prevention advice, providing Smartwater property marking kits and other crime prevention equipment to reduce the likelihood of repeat offences at those addresses.
We have submitted intelligence reports to share information with our wider policing teams that we have gained on our patrols and visits.
We have worked with a social landlord to help address an issue between neighbours, to resolve the dispute and try to prevent the situation from escalating and thereby reducing the risk of harm.
We have conducted Heritage Crime patrols to reduce instances of crime and antisocial behaviour at locations and buildings that have historical significance. These have included listed buildings and scheduled monuments such as Lilleshall Monument and Lilleshall Abbey.
We attended the Newport Bonfire at the Rugby Club. It was great to see so many people out and taking advantage of the milder weather to enjoy this enjoyable community event.
We have had cause to stop a number of motorists, and although none needed to be reported for consideration of prosecution, words of advice have been given on these occasions to educate drivers.
We have liaised with Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service about a property, and we will be involved in a joint visit next week to risk assess and ensure compliance with Fire Regulations.
We conducted a talk to a local community group. This was a great opportunity to introduce our team, provide an insight into policing and for the group to ask us questions around issues that are affecting them, or they are concerned about.
I hope this post goes some way to demonstrate some of the work our team are doing in your community.
If you found it useful, or interesting, please reply and let me know your thoughts. If it is something that you all like, we will continue to provide similar posts (when operational commitments allow).
