Westcotes

Drug Use/Supply
Priority 3: Illegal Drug Use
You said: You continue to have concerns about people dealing and using drugs in Westcotes.
What we are going to do: Whilst we will robustly deal with those who break the law, we will also seek to engage with the drug users in order to understand what factors are driving them to this lifestyle and what interventions we can o?er.

WE DID:

We've had a busy week this week, largely due to follow up work from last weeks cannabis cultivation we discovered. The drugs that we take off the street is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the investigation goes; for every cultivation that we discover we have a mountain of information to work through to ensure we know exactly who the big players are and how we're going to evidence it and put a stop to the harm they bring to our communities. Last weeks haul has given us some big pieces of the puzzle which is leading us closer to the criminals that we really need to stop.
We also enforced a warrant on a property this week in relation to drug dealing, again this was a big step towards gathering the evidence we need to prosecute the right people and sent out a message that we are still coming for them.
Thanks to some great information that we were passed we were able to empty a house that was being used as a drugs den and have it boarded up and secured within 24 hours of it being reported. This shows how effective we can be when everyone works together.

Burglary Residential
You said: You are concerned about burglars targeting your property.
We are going to do: We are studying the data to learn what has caused the small rise in burglaries in Westcotes so that we can target the right people and places at the right time to cause maximum disruption to criminals and offer the most reassurance and safety to our residents properties.

WE DID:

A male who committed a number of burglaries has been arrested by officers from our eagle-eyed team whilst off duty as they recognised him from CCTV footage. The male had committed a number of burglaries and thefts including at properties on our beat so having him locked up will go a long way to reducing the number of incidents. We find that a small section of society is responsible for committing a large number of the crimes so locking a repeat offender up always goes a long way.

We’ve had an incident where someone who was moving house has had some property stolen which serves as a reminder that we need to remain vigilant and remember that those who commit these crimes will often follow the path of least resistance and find easy wins for themselves.

You may have seen our team out engaging with our residents to give out advice on burglary prevention, reassure those who have been victims and also show those looking to commit crime that we are watching. If you see us come and say hi and have a chat about what’s been happening.

Theft From Motor Vehicle

You Said: You are concerned about criminals targeting your vehicles to either steal them or steal property from them.
What we are going to do: Focus on where these crimes are being committed and who is committing them and use this information to direct our approach to tackle this problem as effectively as possible. Those who commit these crimes are are often repeat offenders so when they are caught we won't stop there and will ensure we produce reports that reflect on the severity of their offending to provide our residents with the service they would expect.

WE DID:

We’ve had a few more incidents this past month where we’ve had both attempt theft and thefts from motor vehicles. The majority of these have been items such as wallets left on display in cars or vehicles left unlocked. A lot of these thieves will go out to try as many cars as they can in quick succession so it’s really important that we stop making easy for these who are targeting our vehicles. Again, it’s the minority who repeatedly commit crime and bring harm to our community and we can often see patterns in the offending that we can coincide with known offenders being in the area. This has allowed us to draw some conclusions that is shaping our approach to put a stop to this but we need to work together to get the positive result we all want. One result of this will be that you will see our team stopping and engaging with people and whilst this will be friendly, it will also be them looking at who is in the area in our effort to get a firmer grip on the movements on these thieves.