Many of you will have seen our local PCSO’s around and about in the village. The acronym stands for Police Community Support Officer.
The West Babergh Safer Neighbourhood Team of which these officers form a part has made a real step forward in community communications in recent weeks by throwing open its monthly Tasking Meetings to the general public. In order to make the process more community lead I have been asked to take the chair of these meetings, which at present take place at the police station in Sudbury, but which may well move to more ‘neutral’ territory in due course.
The aim of the Tasking meetings is to hear from members of the community about the problems on which they feel that the Safer Neighbourhood Teams should be focussing, and then to set an action plan by prioritising these concerns. Progress made on previous actions is also reviewed.
There has been a lot of hostile comment about the PCSO’s since they were created some years ago. Some characterise them as ‘police-lite’ or claim that they represent ‘policing on the cheap’. People point to the fact that they have no powers of arrest and believe therefore that therefore that they can have no real value.
This, I think, massively misses the point. The Safer Neighbourhood personnel, some of whom are in fact police constables and sergeants with full police powers, are not the same policemen who respond to calls about crime, and they have a different function to perform. Their aim is not to run around arresting people but to try to prevent crime and anti social behaviour by working in the community. Listening to the concerns of local people, they try to engage with potential troublemakers at an early stage, and to make sure that existing troublemakers know that someone is keeping an eye on them. They are also involved in encouraging the Community Speedwatch programme, and concern themselves with issues such as under-age drinking, littering and drug taking. All of these matters are things that the public, when asked in surveys, claim to want to see addressed. The walk around Acton described on the blog recently was a Safer Neighbourhood initiative, and there will be another similar event in Great Waldingfield in early December.
The police are not the only people involved in the Safer Neighbourhood exercise. Babergh has community support officers who also attend the Tasking Meetings, as do representatives from the Fire Service and youth workers. It is already possible to point to some success stories in areas that have been prioritised and targeted by the Team.
The Babergh West Safer Neighbourhood Team covers 36 individual parishes around Sudbury, but does not include Sudbury and Cornard. I am hoping that representatives from the parish councils will come along to the meetings as often as they can, but the meeting is open to any member of the public who has a local problem that they wish to bring to the attention of the Team.
More information about Safer Neighbourhood Teams and future meetings and events can be found on the Suffolk Constabulary Website. Or go to:
http://www.onesuffolk.co.uk/safersuffolk/
http://www.onesuffolk.co.uk/SaferSuffolk/WestBabergh/
The first site gives information about Safer Neighbourhood Teams in general and the second information about the West Babergh team in particular.
