POLICE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT MEETING 4TH FEB 2019

A blustery winter’s evening saw a very well attended meeting for parish councillors with our local Community Engagement Officer, PC Jon Gerrish. Tea, coffee and biscuits were well received by the attendees and thanks go to the volunteers at the Village Hall. In our tucked away part of Suffolk we are fortunate to suffer relatively few crimes, but there has the recent mini crimewave with thefts of farm machinery, and the somewhat bizarre barn collision and lead theft from a greenhouse roof suffered by one of our residents. It seems here in Hawkedon we never go more than a year without a house burglary or two.

By way of introduction, PC Gerrish highlighted a few initiatives introduced by Suffolk Police to design a way out of crime; DOCKERS was the acronym for this. I assume the methodology behind this would be to install lighting and maybe buy a dog. Always a fine deterrent in my view and I didn’t even go on the focus group... I am old enough to remember the old campaign by a different constabulary which went under the name of “lock it or lose it”.


The floor was opened for questions. The first was asking advice on policing an area around a lake where families and children gather in the summer for picnics and the like, only for them to be spoiled by anti social drinking and unseemly behaviours by other adults and teens. One suggestion was for CCTV to be used, maybe from houses in the vicinity, to capture such occurrences. The legal aspects of the use of CCTV was brought into question as to the consents involved and privacy issues.


The rest of the questions revolved in the main about the use of the speed safety cameras, manned by steadfast members of the public, in our surrounding villages. Here in Hawkedon we don’t have a ‘main’ road and speed is less of an issue for concern – although the recent demolition of the grit bin, road sign, tree and barn would contradict that.


Future meetings have been proposed and it may be an idea to invite the rural crime unit and a few local farmers so more pertinent subjects could be aired and discussed and what could possibly be done to assist in this area.