Police and Community Together Meeting (PACT), 6.30pm, Tuesday 27 February 2024, Portswood Church: Notes on handling of CCTV footage, and the community speed gun programme (ncj)

On the panel:

Francesca Prior – SCC Community Engagement Manager,

Malkeat Singh – Community Engagement Officer,

PC Adam O’Neill – Community Engagement & Liaison Officer, Portswood, Swaythling and Bassett

Councillors Finn, Savage, Reynard and one Councillor from Bevois Valley were in the ‘audience’.

This is mainly a note of the two questions I raised in response to specific queries from the HRA Crime information sharing WhatsApp Group. A lot more was discussed at the meeting and an official set of minutes will be produced at some point which will be shared in the Group:

Police to look at the community speed gun programme

This was a Matters Arising from the Minutes of the previous PACT Meeting at Highfield Church Centre on 28 September 2023. I understand that this was raised by CJ relating to excessive speeding in Highfield Lane.

Francesca Prior (FP) had hoped to have someone from the Highways Team at the meeting. However, no one responded to her request. She hopes to have someone at the next PACT Meeting.

It was reported at the meeting that the Portswood Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) had taken this on board as an area of concern and are to undertake training in the use of the speed gun on 13 or 14 March. The training will be given by the Road Policing Unit. According to National Police Guidelines, the Portswood NPT had to do the training course first. Once trained, the speed gun programme would be launched immediately. They had speed guns in cars. PC O’Neill said that Portswood NPT were keen to spend time on traffic enforcement and will carry this out in their downtime. He noted down Highfield Lane and they will also target other areas too; Westwood Road was mentioned by one participant.

Handling of CCTV footage

You will be aware of the correspondence I received from PC Adam O’Neill on the subject of CCTV footage being declined in the reporting of some ‘low level’ crime incidents, particularly when there were very clear images of the perpetrators. I shared this in the Group on 21/2/24, see in link: https://www.highfieldresidents.org.uk/40027-2/

At the PACT meeting, in addition to reiterating some of what he said in his email to me (above), PC O’Neill also said that if anyone from our Group had a grievance about their CCTV footage being refused in ‘low level’ crimes, he is more than happy to take a look at the footage.

There were other issues discussed at the meeting, including that the police had new powers to seize illegal electric scooters on the spot and have them destroyed if a formal notice/warning is ignored or if there is a traffic violation.