‘Wardens help folk

A look at the work of the community safety team

They are the team who pound the pavements of the city to prevent fraudsters from striking.

The main objective of Dundee City Council’s community safety team is to protect people from low-level crime and antisocial behaviour.

As part of the Tele’s Safe as Houses campaign, we sat down with Garyth Jardine, a community safety manager with the council, to discuss the local authority’s efforts to prevent locals becoming victims.

He said: “The job is not only to patrol the streets but also to carry out educational work. As well as visiting schools, we also visit sheltered housing complexes to speak to vulnerable elderly groups.

“We make home safety and personal safety visits to check windows and doors.

“We also help to keep people safe when they go to the shops — using the cash machine and that kind of thing.

“Quite often we give talks to larger groups at sheltered housing complexes.”

Garyth said his team identifies groups around the city which are vulnerable to con artists and coordinates its work around them to ensure t hey feel safe i n t heir communities.

“It can be because people are vulnerable or elderly and they might be an easy target,” he added.

“Our job is to make these areas as safe as possible — we work closely with the police and fire service and various other agencies to make Dundee a better place.

“One of the things we have done is to identify that people in sheltered housing can be more vulnerable, so we arranged for wardens to use the sheltered housing facilities.

“We have warden teams out patrolling from 3.30pm until midnight and we arranged for our wardens to take their breaks in the