Neighbourhood Watch goes from strength to strength in Kensington
06 September 2012
Twelve months ago, PC Dave Dance from Queens Gate Safer Neighbourhoods Team was given the task of breathing new life into the local Neighbourhood Watch Scheme.
Over the course of the year, he has been busy meeting with local residents and businesses in the local community to help raise interest in and promote the benefits that Neighbourhood Watch can bring.
The result of his hard work has seen more than 195 new members recruited who have not only joined existing schemes but started up new ones of their own.
Neighbourhood Watch has been a well known and respected scheme for many years, which encourages local residents to work closely with local Police in helping to raise awareness around crime prevention and share information and intelligence on suspicous activities and behaviour, which help deter burglars and other criminals from targeting their neighbourhoods.
PC Dave Dance said: "Neighbourhood Watch is a great way for local people to look out for each other and get involved in their neighbourhoods and encourages residents to speak to us about issues in their neighbourhoods and provides us with information and intelligence to help us target our patrols more effectively.
"Neighbourhood Watch is a great way for people to look out for each other."
"We work closely with a number of volunteer co-ordinators with whom we keep in regular contact, providing them with crime prevention information and materials aswell as alerts on local crime incidents and trends to pass on to their members.
One of our recent alerts focused on the activities of fraudsters in the area who were passing plumbers rings off as gold rings and trying to sell them to people in the street. One fraudster made the mistake of practicing the scam on one of our eagled eyed Neighbour Hood Watch members who subsequently called police who attended and arrested him."
PC Dance added: "A lot of hard work has been put into promoting Neighbourhood Watch in Queens Gate in the 12 months since we relaunched the scheme. The response we have received from residents and local business has been fantastic but we are a long way from being finished and over the next 12 months I want the scheme to grow so that hopefully by this time next year we will have all streets in the ward covered."
For further information on Neighoburhood Watch in your area, please contact your local Safer Neighbourhoods team, full contact information for which is available on the Safer Neighbourhoods section of our website.