Good afternoon,
Please find below this weeks update in relation to the policing of Chester City Centre.
We continue to operate our patrol plan in relation to the City Centre, with support from other Forcewide Units, who you may have seen around the City. This has been further enhanced by Operation Revision, which we are running throughout the summer holidays, with officers from across the Beat Management Team and wider Local Policing Unit, actively patrolling anti social behaviour hotspots. We include engagement and diversionary activity in this operation, in addition to enforcement. You will see a lot of updates in relation to these patrols on social media.
Last Friday and Saturday we deployed our usual Night Time Economy operation, which included the Safer Streets Bus, to provide a safe place for people to go to if they feel vulnerable or if they wish to speak to officers. On both nights arrests were made on the Night Time Economy for various offences. Officers are briefed to deal with issues positively at an early stage to prevent them escalating.
We have deployed our Pop Up Police Station to the Story House and Grosvenor Park, where we have met with members of the public, aswell as being available to offer advice in respect of crime prevention.
We have been working with the Community Safety Wardens to support their patrolling of the River Dee, and deter and disrupt anti social behaviour, preventing people jumping of the bridges and swimming in the water to keep everyone safe. The weather was very poor last weekend, so this always provides a deterrent to such behaviour.
In combination with the high visibility patrols, we continue to deploy officers in plain clothes. This has resulted in a number of stop searches being carried out and drugs have been located. It also has a longer term impact to those committing crime, in that they never know whether a plain clothes officers is nearby. We have also utilised the plain clothes officers inconjunction with uniformed officers to target ASB hot spots in order to identify poor behaviour, which is more difficult to detect when offenders see uniformed officers approaching.
Whilst on patrol, officers continue to gather information and intelligence from the community which, assists us with developing an intelligence picture to plan future proactive work and operations. This also assists us with longer term problem solving, which includes the use of ancillary orders. This week we have issued a Community Protection Notice warning Letter, and have authority to issue a further two. These are in relation to individuals we have identified as being particularly problematic in the City, and whilst we will continue to utilise the criminal justice system in response to individual crimes, these warning letters are the first stage of an escalation for longer term measures to be applied to them, which can restrict certain behaviours or exclude them from certain locations. We have had real success with this tactic previously, and although it can seem to take time to implement they provide real longer term benefits.
There have been issues raised with e-Bikes and scooters in the City, so we have given this attention, resulting in the seizure of two bikes and a number of others being given words of advice in relation to their use.
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Have a good weekend.
Kind regards,
James
James Wilson – Inspector – Chester Local Policing Unit
Chester Police Station| Blacon Avenue |Chester| Cheshire | CH1 5BD
Phone: 01606 364666 | Email: james.wilson@cheshire.pnn.police.uk
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