Police News – Rochdale East

Inspector Niall Pawson, Rochdale East

Inspector Niall Pawson...

Our priorities remain with domestic abuse victims whereby our specialised team within the public sector reform offer reassurance and assistance to where it’s most needed.

In addition to this the team are able to allocate the most suitable service to the victim and their family ensuring they get the best possible support from our dedicated agencies.

With burglaries being on the rise in and around the Kirkholt and Castleton area, a focus and a strong priority of ours has resulted in partnership work positively impacting the community with reduced crime rates.

This week we are seeing an increase of entry gained via windows being slightly left open so we are asking all our communities to remember to fully shut and lock their windows before leaving their houses.

It has also been brought to our attention about the increase of anti-social behaviour in the Kingsway area and Hare Hill Park. We are aware that Hare Hill Park is a problem area for anti-social behaviour during the summer months and we plan to make this a priority.

We want to say thank you to those who completed one of our surveys, however, with only a week to go, our PCSOs are still out and about collecting vital information on how we are performing and what we can do to help better our communities. We are seeing comments such as “the Police are already doing a good job” and “there is always a visible presence of a PCSO” which shows we are continuing to do our best for you.

In relation to recent burglaries we are seeing what is known as distraction burglary. This is where two people pretend to be from a company, e.g. gas company, and tell you something has happened and they need to check everything’s fine, e.g. with your boiler. The catch is that that whilst one ‘distracts’ you the other takes items of property.

This wasn’t the case when there was a foot chase when one offender was detained on the 19 May.

We are advising people to check ID badges and if you haven’t had a letter of warning ring the company up to check if someone is supposed to be coming out.

After all our efforts and hard work our top arrest for the week is a 16-year-old male is currently in our custody cells after being arrested on suspicion of threats to kill, harassment and shoplifting. His Monday got off to a bad start when Rochdale’s tallest officer turned up to arrest him at only 8am, his day got worse when a detention officer carried out a routine check to find the young man sobbing as he would miss his exam, he then told our officer, "I want my mum". Hopefully this will be a lesson learnt the hard way for this young man, although this was far from his first trip to see us.