Welcome to all
Welcome to our guests, PCSO – Luke Scadding – PCSO6688; Bristol City Councillors Yassin Mohamud (Lawrence Hill) and Amal Ali (Frome Vale)
- Luke Scadding, PCSO – He is aware from the Facebook group that there is crime going on. However only a small proportion of this is being called in. According to police stats, The Dings looks incredibly safe and like nothing ever happens. The police cannot launch investigations based off a group comment. So if we want the police to be more present, we need to be reporting crimes, or things that seem suspicious. When police get a lot of reports, they can get funding to put more staff on.
There are certain ongoing investigations that they cannot give too much information about but happy to answer questions that come up. Would be happy to come to a meeting once a month to check in with residents about how things are going.
To report a crime:
Call 999 in an emergency – if people are causing trouble, are abusive, threatening, or you are feeling ‘alarmed, harassed or distressed’, this is the number to call. The police assess the risk to the caller so if you and the people you can see are safe, there may be less of a response.
Call 101 or report on the website to report non-urgent crimes https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/report/.
Go into as much detail as you can. Currently there is nowhere to upload photo or video evidence, you can say you will supply this on request, people have also used other methods e.g. uploading onto YouTube privately and sending the link (as long as it doesn’t violate YouTube’s terms of service). PCSO Scadding is keen to get in contact with people who have more information to pass on. You can report in any language online.
You will be given a crime reference number.
Once you have the crime number, you can also email our local councillor Cllr.Yassin.Mohamud@bristol.gov.uk (or Frome Vale cllr.amal.ali@bristol.gov.uk ) with the crime reference, If you want to report a crime, you can go to Avon and somerset site, report in any language.
Specific Issues
- Cycle Track – caravan parked on cycle track, with a caravan. Police aware. However, it is a council thing, police working with them, finding it slow progress. The councillors present offered to take this issue up for them. Councillors have to report 5-7 working days. Regarding caravans, there is a dedicated traveller team (includes all travellers, not just ethnic travellers) who we can contact (0117 922 4272, gypsies.travellers@bristol.gov.uk). Concern about dog with a sign saying, ‘I do bite’. Dog handler looking into it. In order for police to be involved, there would need to be grounds to report e.g. attacking passersby.
- Drug Dealing – increased a lot in last month. Beside the park, outside Safe house, in the courtyard of Shaftesbury crusade, the bin areas of the newer flats. Could we get a car around regularly, maybe every hour or so? Especially at weekends in the evenings.
Answer: currently the neighbourhood team don’t work past midnight so don’t patrol then. Call-in teams are informed, should be patrolling but have a lot of other responsibilities they need to respond to. Police have staffing issues and limited resources. Busy in St Pauls at the moment. However if there is a pattern to these incidents, this can be a good reason to get extra funding to cover late at night.
- How often does someone patrol the area? Luke says this is his only beat, patrols 2-4 times a day when he is not having to respond to a call.
- Stealing bikes, people trying car doors – the pattern from Facebook reports appears to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays 2-4am most peak times. Please please please report these incidents – most are currently not reported.
- CCTV – The community can’t put up CCTV to monitor public spaces. Police can do this but need to justify reasons. They can’t do this if they have very few reports of crime. In Lawrence Hill the community there was able to show through reports that there was an issue, police were able to apply for a temporary CCTV camera for 6 months, and this has led to arrests and crime going down in this area.
- Tunnel in Dings Park – dark space, lots of drug dealings going on there. Development going up on the other side – part of developer’s promise is to develop the tunnel, light it better. There aren’t many crime logs for this issue, so it hasn’t been a police priority.
- Lighting in park – hasn’t worked properly for years, reported to council multiple times. Councillors now aware, will follow this up.
- Youth Work – Luis (youth worker) has noticed that when people are aware that youth work or positive community activity is going on, the people causing problems tend to stay away.
- Knives and Syringes: One resident reported that she found a knife, told to collect it herself. Can we have an amnesty box? We have found needles in the park in the daytime as well. People dropping needles not just in the park but also in residential areas.
- Reporting crimes can feel useless – many residents expressed frustration in reporting crimes. Shared experiences of being told there is nothing police can do, and information doesn’t get acted on, and this makes it not worth the time to report. PCSO Luke acknowledged this difficulty, encouraged us to keep reporting to build up a pattern which can get us extra resources. One resident shared an experience of repeatedly reporting antisocial behaviour outside the Shaftsbury Crusade. This eventually resulted in regular police patrols and interventions, and those people have now moved on.
PCSO Luke explained that known issues from frequent reporting can proactive development programs that the police can get resources for and deal with as a whole.
- Facebook– is a good tool to know what is going on, but YOU MUST REPORT THIS, they cannot arrest someone off seeing something on Facebook. But the problem is there is no way to add a photo file or video to 101 log. If you tell them you have CCTV, they will get back to you by email and ask you to upload this. You can put it on YouTube or send a file or a link.
- Repeated breakins to communal areas of the flats, communal doors and gates often not secure: Police in contact with landlords.
- Things have been a bit quieter the last week or two, maybe because it’s colder and darker. We are all aware this can change very quickly.
Date of next meeting: – to be advised
The clear message from meeting is:
Report
Report
Report
This is the only way things will change