Harlow Community Police: May report
By Inspector Tony Walker

CORONAVIRUS continues to play a significant part in everyone’s life and its something that we have never encountered before, most Harlow residents have been adhering to the conditions imposed by the government, our towns and shopping centres look very like different places with shops and restaurants closed and social distancing in place. Our work with partners continues, albeit in a different format, meetings are now conducted over the phone or via video link we are still working hard to maintain our standards of policing and engagement despite the challenging circumstances.

Our Police Community Support Officers have been supporting the local charity Community Embrace and have been delivering care packages to people who have been nominated anonymously.

There is a small minority who do not abide by the conditions and this can be reported on the Essex Police website and will be addressed either by the police or the local authority, hopefully we will see a staggered return to normality soon.

Day to day life continues and this month we have welcomed three new members to the Community Policing Team, Pc Adam Drane (Gt Parndon & Hare St and Little Parndon) Pc Jacob George (Sumners & Kingsmoor/Staple Tye) & Matthew Bright ( Bush Fair & Mark Hall) all three have previously worked on the response teams in Harlow and come with good local knowledge of issues affecting the community, they replace three officers who are moving on to pastures new. We are also welcoming two new Child and Young person’s officers to develop upon the good work already being done with younger members of the community, they will be working closely with our partners.

Some good work from the Town Centre Team last month resulted in a local 44 year old male being arrested for a number of bicycle thefts in and around the Town Centre he was charged with a total of 16 offences and placed directly before the magistrates court he was later convicted and sentenced to 6 months in prison, unfortunately the stolen bikes were not recovered. Officers have submitted a funding bid together with the Council for some new secure bicycle racks in the Town Centre, if approved this should provide new secure equipment where bikes can be stored reducing the opportunity for bikes to be stolen.

The team have also been concentrating on two areas that have been subject of recent antisocial behaviour and of concern to residents these being The Hawthorns and Bowhill Way, two distinctly different areas some distance away from each other, increased patrols have been carried out at both locations and arrests have been made for drug related offences and breach of an injunction. Our patrols will continue in both uniform and plain clothes so if you do encounter any anti-social behaviour of suspicious activity please do call us. Garages, sheds and greenhouses are being targeted at the moment with tools and other valuable items being stolen, these buildings are often not secured as well as homes so please do give some thought as to how secure your property is, consider security marking your possessions or removing high value items when not in use, we do have some crime prevention equipment and information which we try to pass on to all victims of this type of crime.

Lastly and as a reminder, The Police Station remains open Monday to Saturday between 9am and 5pm outside these hours there is a phone outside the police station were contact can be made with an officer. Non-emergency calls can be made via 101 and there is the Community Policing Team email address [email protected]

As always you can make anonymous reports via Crime stoppers via their website crimestoppers-uk.org or by calling 0800 555 111