Neighbourhood Support Selwyn

Neighbourhood Support aims to make our homes, streets, neighbourhoods and communities safer and more caring places in which to live.

More than one hundred and twenty Canterbury Community Patrollers gathered recently on April 17th for a Training Day in the Baylis Room at the Lincoln Recreation Centre.

We have a purpose-built Neighbourhood Support website, selwyn.getsready.net, and over 800 Neighbourhood Support groups already exist in Selwyn, with details securely stored in this database.

Would you like to join one?

Making Selwyn a safe place to live, work and play!

Content provided courtesy of the Selwyn District Council: www.selwyn.govt.nz.

Lincoln Training Day for Community Patrollers

The day was organised by the Canterbury District Committee and the Police.

The programme was designed to ensure all patrols were working from the same page with regard to being observant and recording information useful to the Police.

A senior comms dispatcher, Grace, spoke of her role of assignment of the police within the region, based upon incoming information. The best way for the patrollers to quickly pass information to the Police was by phone, following the recommended six steps of information.

The District Intel Supervisor, Mike Kingston spoke of the patrollers’ partnership with the Police, and the police business. It was acknowledged that only 25 percent of actual crimes were reported. Senior Sergeant

A presentation of a CPNZ shield was made by Senior Sergeant Roy Appley to Mike Fenton a patroller from Christchurch South. This was in recognition of the significant contribution Mike had made in promoting patrol activities including public awareness and strengthening patrols in the Canterbury region.

Roy Appley conduced a session on the construction of written reports to be sent to the Police, and we were shown how to identify gang patch markings and symbols.

A short lunch break was followed by a practical test, the observations of two ‘suspicious’ vehicles with open doors and boots were parked adjacent to the building. Both vehicles contained gang clothing, balaclavas, break and entry tools, drug paraphernalia, weapons etc. The attendees observed and identified all the items of interest and a report for the Police was created.

Finally, I presented a summary analysis of the yearly patrol hours as recorded on the Community Patrol NZ (CPNZ) statistics website for the whole country.

There was a gradual increase in hours patrolled over nine years from 2011 to 2019, recording 103,000 to 151,000 patrol hours. In 2020 COVID 19, particularly level four lock down, caused a 46 percent patrol hours reduction back down to 103,000 patrol hours.

The country was divided into 12 regions, nine in the North Island and three in the South Island. Each region was ranked based on the number of hours patrolled; the Canterbury region could feel justifiably proud as it held the top ranked position with 18,554 hours for the year 2020.

This was approximately 4,000 hours more than the second placed region of Central North Island; the Auckland region by contrast had the least with 1,500 hours.

Article by JF Pearson

Tool Engraving

Throughout the year Police recover thousands of dollars worth of stolen property when conducting Search Warrants.

Power tools are a hot commodity traded amongst the criminal fraternity. They are readily obtainable and easy to on-sell.

Often these recovered items end up in the police auctions because we have no way of identifying them so that they can be returned to their rightful owners. Police are keen to shut down this black market trade and encourage ‘tradies’ (builders, electricians, plumbers etc) to be more vigilant around protecting their property. A market only exists when there are buyers. Seeing items being sold on social media sites at cheap prices immediately sets off alarm bells and should be reported to the Police. By engraving their tools with their Driver’s License number, which is unique to the person, significantly reduces the opportunity for these items to be stolen. It also means if police recover these items they are able to be returned to their rightful owners. Ensuring valuable tools are not left on building sites and securing the vehicles storing these items also reduces the opportunity. Ways in which tradies can do this are by: not parking these vehicles on the street overnight, ensuring the vehicle is locked and ideally secured in a garage or up a driveway out of site from the street. Sensor lights, audible alarm, steering locks, a dog or video surveillance are all good crime prevention measures to discourage would-be thieves. This may seem like a lot of measures to take, but to wake up one morning to find your tools, or worse still, your vehicle stolen is a very costly exercise, not to mention the inconvenience of not being able to continue working. In recent times Police have attended most of the trade store promotions, such as tool sale days or trade breakfasts, to offer a free engraving service. This has been well received by all parties attending these events and our Community Patrol partners are also willing to visit construction sites to assist in engraving tools. Community Patrols are a voluntary organisation who assist police in many crime prevention activities. It is good to see some of our tradies have taken measures to prevent them being victims of crime, but unfortunately this is often only after they have suffered a previous loss. If you are interested in finding out more about this service, please do not hesitate to contact:

Community Patrols – Canterbury@cpnz.org.nz