PCSO nominated for prestigious award

A PCSO has been nominated for an award after his engagement plan helped to significantly improve the lives of people in a city community.

As part of their work in neighbourhood policing, PCSOs are uniquely positioned to have wider engagement with their communities and also have an impact by working with officers, detectives and other teams to help tackle more serious issues affecting local people.

One PCSO who was recently recognised for his good problem-solving work is Sam Coleman. PCSO Coleman created a plan which became lifechanging for people living in Shelton Lock, and which was ultimately recognised at the National PCSO Awards.

Sam was at the heart of an operation which began in 2020 following a series of robberies around the canal path, bike thefts, drug taking and assaults.

The undertaking was significant, needing to restore the community’s confidence, and the wider Safer Neighbourhood Team began by strategically scanning the area and bringing together all the information they gathered, including that these crimes were, in the majority, committed by one group.

From this, they were able to plan how they would respond.

Throughout initial enquiries and scanning, it became apparent that the group had created an identity and were displaying all the hallmarks of an urban street gang, wearing distinguishing colours and bandanas, having a gang name and sign and a shared motive, all of which contributed to the fear in the community which was being reported to us.

Proactive work then began, with plain clothed PCs and high visibility PCSOs, engaging both with the group and with the community as well as taking appropriate action where crimes were identified.

Alongside this, the operation sought to educate and engage with the group as well as provide positive intervention and safeguarding through external agencies, such as Catch 22.

A number of orders were also applied for to tackle any persisting offenders:

• Acceptable behaviour contracts, which are managed by the police, Derby City Council and schools, for younger members.
• Community protection warnings for the core members. These came with conditions to not associate with other members, be in certain areas of Shelton Lock, or to have a curfew. If any of these are breached then fines of several hundred pounds can be issued for each breach, as well as potentially going to court.
• Civil injunctions, with similar prohibitions as above, however these carry the power of arrest for any breaches.

Since January 2021, there has been no such incidents committed by the group.

PCSO Coleman said: “It was a really proud moment to be nominated for these awards.

“I think the success of this action was down to the support I received from my team and supervision, the willingness of the community to aid us in any way they can, after I had built a good relationship with them, and that we simply did the fundamentals of the PCSO and Safer Neighbourhood team roles well.

“Not only were we able to stop these offences with robust action, but ultimately the work led to completely dismantling this emerging criminal group.

“Their presence on social media apps to display their stolen items, drug use and recruitment was extensive. It was quite the motivation for me personally to ensure I not only had visual results for the community to see to instil trust and safety but also to thoroughly resolve the problem in a sustainable manner.

“We’ve been told first-hand about the positive impact this work has had on the people who live there, and that is what it was all about.

"This project has been used, I’m told, in our training school inputs and is being shared as good practice with other forces and academia which I am very proud of.

“Our job as PCSOs is to listen to our communities, engage, and help make things better for them where we can by joining with other colleagues and acting on what we have been told. So, it’s really amazing to have had the nomination for this project in particular.

“Communities can be confident that, wherever and whenever they tell us there is a problem, we will work as best we can to tackle it.”

The nature of the PCSO role and the one-team approach is invaluable for teams investigating and tackling criminality in a specific area.

Detective Chief Inspector Matt Croome oversees the investigation of a wide range of serious and organised crime and said: “It is so important to understand the background and the community surrounding any crimes we investigate in order to get the right answers and tackle it in the most appropriate way.

“Being able to work with officers who are dedicated to working in their communities and know their areas really well is absolutely essential to our role as investigators and gives us that context we need.

“Not only this, by being at the heart of the community the work of these officers allows potentially important information to be picked up which can then be fed back for us to look into.

“This is a great example of where these roles have all worked together for the better and to make a lasting change, which is the reason we get into policing, no matter the role.

“We have also established multi-agency Serious Organised Crime and Exploitation (SocEx) meeting structures that allow oversight of exploitation and serious organised crime disruption across Derbyshire.

“This is underpinned by information and intelligence gathered from strong neighbourhood policing initiatives like this, which allow us to work in partnership to deliver an effective response to tackle serious organised crime and exploitation which impact communities in Derbyshire.

“We know that young people can become involved in crime through relatively low level offences, building to become part of more organised groups and the work done by Sam and the rest of the team has shown some really positive impacts for those youngsters – characterised by the lack of further offences being committed.”

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