Community Policing Team - Inspectors Blog

We have continued to patrol hotspot areas across the city and wider parishes where we receive reports of anti-social behaviour.  In total we have completed 354 hours of hi-visibility patrol this week across Colchester.  The new Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) was approved last month and we will continue to work alongside the city wardens to disperse those in breach and assist with evidence for those who consistently breach the order. The PSPO is in place to tackle a range of activities that have a detrimental effect on the quality of life, including street drinking, begging and other intimidating behaviour, using skateboards in public spaces, and placing advertising boards on the streets.   We conducted 7 stop and search last week which resulted in 3 arrests and 1 community resolution being issued.  We continue to work with businesses and partners in the city centre to tackle shoplifting and a 32 year old male was charged with theft and taken to court this week as well as a 38 year old male charged with 5 counts of theft.

We also had another Project Servator deployment this week on the 2nd November, which focuses on high visibility patrolling alongside specially trained officers who can spot those individuals who may be involved in crime.  We complete these operations on a regular basis and at different times and days so that we can build up a local intelligence picture and disrupt criminality.

Following some pro-active work of the team, we managed to locate and arrest a man who was wanted on warrant for failing to attend court for a violent offence.  Luckily we do not have too many people fail to attend court but when they do, we will always liaise with local partners and utilise our intelligence teams to help us locate them and bring them before the court.   We often circulate people of interest on our Facebook pages so keep an eye out and you can report any intelligence direct via are online portal or anonymously via Crimestoppers Giving information anonymously | Crimestoppers (crimestoppers-uk.org)

Storm Ciaran has unfortunately caused disruption to our city last week and with such severe weather comes an increase in calls for service for the Police.  These calls for service varies from obstructions to the road network, tress and electricity cabling causing a danger, increase in road traffic incidents, assisting other agencies with rescue operations and concerns for the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable persons.  We have worked hard to respond to these additional demands on top of our everyday calls for service and thankful for the community and partners who have assisted us in ensuring these calls are responded to.

Often we will work alongside other forces to complete joint operations as often crime is conducted across several forces and we work together to tackle this organised crime. This week we worked alongside the metropolitan police on a possible location involved in human trafficking.  These incidents are rare in Colchester but the damage caused to victims is often unseen by the general public and the crime occurs behind closed doors.  The work to disrupt organised crime is always on-going and we have specialist teams within the police that are dedicated to this work.  On community policing we are often supporting these teams and providing them local intelligence that builds the overall picture of these crime groups.  This is just another area of work that we undertake that would be invisible to the public on a day to day basis.

If you want more information about anything in this blog or want to get in touch about an initiative or something else then please write to us at colchestercommunitypolicingteam@essex.police.uk

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