Hello everyone.
Here’s the Boston Neighbourhood Policing Team Quarterly Newsletter for January. I hope you’ve all welcomed in the New Year and are looking forward to a peaceful and productive 2025. Let’s get to it…
Having three months with an (almost) full team has been a luxury. There have, as always, been challenges, with our officers used to back-fill response roles when they fall below the required staffing levels. Usually our Neighbourhood Policing Officers deal with longer term problem solving and working with partners and are not first on the list to deal with 999 and priority calls but in reality we are seeing much more of this work for the NPT.
In December we worked with our partners in Boston Borough Council CCTV, Community Rangers, Kingdom Enforcement, Pescod Security Team and others on Operation Continents. Tackling prolific shoplifters, the operation saw 5 arrests clearing over 50 offences. Repeat offenders are prosecuted and a Community Behaviour Order sought and obtained. We will continue to pursue these repeat offenders and hope the courts support us in providing some respite for retailers in the town with appropriate, significant sentences.
This period we have welcomed an initiative that has allowed us to increase our visibility in the Town Centre area with targeted foot-patrols. We know people like to see bobbies on the beat. For many years there has been difficulty in providing that visibility with police officers. With a huge backlog of incidents and crimes to deal with there is rarely the time for our police officers to simply get out and engage with the public. The officers who have taken part in these Home Office funded patrols have loved it. Getting back to engaging with the public, retailers and partners on foot is what we joined to do. These patrols have resulted in over 25 arrests, numerous stop searches and a real goodwill from the public. We can only hope the funding for this will continue but as you may be aware the force faces a more than challenging time in terms of its financial position.
Operation Nivada continues (our operation to disrupt illegal businesses) with further closure orders completed and more planned. Our strong partnership work with Trading Standards and Home Office Immigration will continue.
A reminder that a Policing Plan for Boston has been established. A QR code for you to view is below. If you would like a hard copy, please email me and I’ll get one sent out to you. You’ll see lots of the Operations that the NPT are involved in, all of which contribute to our vision of “Making Lincolnshire the Safest Place to Live, Work and Visit”. Again, if you have any questions about any of the operations or activities detailed feel free to get in touch. The plan is due for renewal in April 2025 so if there’s anything you feel we should be doing in 2024 that wasn’t on the current plan please let me know.
Below is an update on the priorities that were set in October..
Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls on West Street, Boston (Priority Set in July 2024)
Action Taken - The NPT have hosted several events on West Street, Boston. They have engaged with legitimate business owners and through Operation Nivada closed 2 more businesses selling illicit goods. We have worked closely with Klaudia Janikowska, Community Engagement Officer for Boston Borough Council. We have promoted the use of the street-safe scheme where members of the public can raise concerns about environmental factors in the area such as lack of lighting or CCTV as well as report issues with ASB or intimidation. We have worked closely with the BBC Homeless Team to find alternative accommodation or move people form the West Street area. The hot-spot patrols have yielded some excellent pro-active arrests for offences including drug dealing, possession, drunk and disorderly behaviour and public order offences. There is still work to complete around the educational piece around British values and acceptable behaviour, but this is a longer term piece of work.
The panel decided that this priority will be discarded with the longer-term partnership work around values and environment to continue
Tackling ASB in Boston Town Centre (Priority Set in July 2024)
Action Taken - The NPT have been tackling key issues of street drinking and homelessness with our partners in BBC and the Rough Sleeping Team and the Community Rangers. There have been 307 extra dedicated patrol hours with 16 arrests for offences such and Possession of a controlled substance with intent to supply, drunk and disorderly. We have used ASB process to deal with youths entering abandoned buildings. ASB has fallen in the last three months in the town centre. You would expect this with the seasonal fluctuations we see in ASB but I have no doubt that some is down to the hard work of the team.
The panel decided that this priority should be discharged.
Tackling Vehicle Nuisance – All Areas (Priority Set in October 2024)
Action Taken - Key ASB vehicle locations have been identified and target hardened. The response has been led by PC Jon Thornton. Engagement with those gathering to show off their cars has resulted in changes of behaviour. We have had assistance of the Special Constables from Lincoln who have competed engagement patrols and issues tickets for offences. There have been targeted patrols by NPT as a team. We have not seen the repeat problems we saw in the autumn. We know there are still some issues with speeding but we have not had the same high number of vehicle nuisance reports.
The panel decided that this priority should be discharged.
At our recent Neighbourhood Priority Setting Meeting on 8th January we discussed our current priorities and what to focus on for the next period. We had input from our local community through our new survey and received 167 responses. Thank-you if you completed this survey, we looked for trends and community feeling that is supported through other evidence sources to put to the panel. We contacted key individuals in our local community for their input. We considered current crime data and trends, the type and harm caused of the crime taking place, street-safe data, opinions gathered from our public engagements, current national and force campaigns and any particular ongoing crime series on our area.
An appeal from me is PLEASE continue to fill out and share the survey. The priorities that have been set at our January meeting were based upon the data from the survey and other sources. We can identify from the survey, to street level, what issues people think are important, we just need enough people to engage to have a strong data set. When you have the opportunity to tell us about issues in the area in the free text box, please be specific as we can pick up themes in words use including street names and places. Share it with your neighbours, if more people fill it out in an area the clearer the issues and trends will be. Thanks!
The survey indicated that the areas of greatest local concerns they were – Drug Dealing, Youth Anti-Social Behaviour, Vehicle Nuisance, Speeding – in that order.
The data sources were examined From the survey, it could be seen that multiple reports of drug dealing in the Riverside to Tattershall Road area of Boston was raised as a theme. This ties in with some local intelligence and knowledge so this area will be a priority. We also had reports from residents and business owners of ASB issues on Red Lion Street in Boston. This mapped with local NPT knowledge so the panel agreed that focus should be on this area.
When examining the information from school visits by our Community Safety Team and the PCC Office it could be seen that the themes and places making young people feel most unsafe were “Town” “Bad Lighting” and “Alleyways”. The panel agreed this was concerning and that work could be undertaken to understand this and try to increase feelings of safety amongst young people.
The new priorities for the next three months will be:
1. Tacking ASB on Red Lion Street, Boston
2. Tackling Drug Dealing in the Riverside – Tattershall Road area of Boston
3. Youth Engagement to improve feelings of safety
There were lots of suggestions which have been added or had already been recently added to our patrol plans. Just because an issue that has been raised from a community does not appear in our priorities does not mean it won’t be addressed, everything that has been raised will be examined and added to patrol plans or examined by your neighbourhood team. Some areas of concern raised are already being examined by the NPT in conjunction with other policing departments and partners.
Your Neighbourhood Policing Team consists of:
T/Insp Ian Cotton
Sgt David Robinson
Sgt Will Robson
Boston Town Centre – PC Danni Pratt
PCSO Shreeji Brahmbhatt
PCSO Paula Scott
PCSO Jackie Norcott
Boston Town East – PC – Benedict Kelly
PCSO Renata Kosiba
PCSO Kym Thornton
Boston Town West - PC – Benedict Kelly/PC Danni Pratt
Boston Rural West - PC Jon Thornton
PCSO Nigel Grant
PCSO Rob Johnson
Boston Rural East - PC David Brennan
Resilience Team (district) – PCSO Marie Williams
PCSO Lisa Waterfall
PCSO Jackie Fulker
The next Priority Setting meeting will be in the second week of April 2025.
