Busy time for officers at weekends
On occasion, I use this article to give you an overview of the nature and volume of incidents your local officers deal with.
I have looked back over the last week, covering the general areas of Uddingston, Bothwell, Blantyre, Hamilton and Larkhall.
Over the week, for these areas, we have dealt with 626 incidents.
Seventy-eight of these incidents relate to complaints about public nuisance and disorder. As you may expect, these incidents peak at the weekend and for that reason we put plans in place with an aim to effectively deal with them. Part of the role of the local problem-solving police officers, for which there are two allocated to each multi-member ward, is to work closely with the community to establish information regarding those who cause these issues and to then allow us to work with other agencies to impact on their behaviour. This is discussed further later in the article.
Thirty incidents relate to calls from the public in relation to concerns they have for someone. These may be about a relative who someone believes is intending to self-harm or a general concern regarding someone’s behaviour. Further to that, we have had eight reports of missing people. Due to the nature of these calls they are often require immediate attendance, and can require significant resources to be allocated to them in order to ensure the safety of those involved.
This can have an impact on our response times to other matters which are not deemed to be urgent. We attended 18 domestic incidents, and on each occasion we carry out all lines of enquiry available to us and we do all we can to support the victim. No-one should suffer from domestic abuse.
We dealt with 31 calls relating to general theft – these include shoplifting and a further nine calls regarding theft by housebreakings and 11 calls about vehicle theft. Many of the other calls relate to issues around road traffic collisions and other road matters. Also vandalisms, assisting the public and alarm calls.
We are appealing for information after two exhausts were removed from vehicles and stolen from a premises on Wilkie Road, Uddingston. The theft occurred between 5.30pm on August 7, and 8.30am the following morning.
Anti-social behaviour is a key local priority for us, both in terms of disorder which occurs in public places and also in relation to incidents relating to problematic households.
In order to effectively tackle the latter, we have a close working relationship with the local authority housing and meet on a regular basis to establish how we can jointly tackle these issues. This can often lead to ASBOS being issued against those who fail to improve their behaviour.
The benefit of these orders is that it gives us additional powers to deal with these individuals and on August 11, a 67-year-old male was arrested for allegedly breaching his order and was held custody for court.
If you have any information you feel should be reported or information on any of the crimes previously detailed please contact the police using 101, or via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.