In this our first e-newsletter you will find news and information on a range of topics :

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Karin Leonard
6 years ago
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And last but not least, we have Community Matters where we will look in more depth at some of the wider issues affecting communities.

1 Park Street Watch Newsletter Issue 32 Autumn 2016 Welcome to your Newsletter In this our first e-newsletter you will find news and information on a range of topics : News Flash is all about the latest news and events - then Crime Focus where we discuss one or two topics of crime and policing with a focus on topics we think are relevant to Park Street. And last but not least, we have Community Matters where we will look in more depth at some of the wider issues affecting communities. News Flash Safer Streets Comes to Park Street Herts police run a scheme called Safer Streets where officers call door to door in a particular road to offer crime prevention advice to residents. The scheme has been running for over a year but October will be one of the first times they have chosen a street in the village. If all goes to plan five officers, including our own PCSO Louise Traxon, will call on houses in Mayflower Road during October. Meet Our Sergeant Sergeant Rory Arnott joined our Safer Neighbourhood team in July and has over 10 years of policing experience having enlisted with Hertfordshire Constabulary in 2005 as a PCSO. In my new role, I will carry on the good work done by Sergeant Scott Curran. I am lucky to be joining a great proactive, hardworking team of officers and PCSO s. My main priorities will be safeguarding the community, especially those who are most vulnerable, reducing anti-social behaviour and preventing and detecting crime. London Colney, St Stephen and Park Street are very safe places to live and work and I have started building working relationships with other professional bodies, including the district council, so that we can use a multi-agency approach in solving long-term quality of life issues. After becoming a police officer Rory worked in Hatfield on both an intervention response team (responding to 999 calls) as well as a proactive unit targeting those involved in priority offences 1

2 (burglary, robbery and vehicle crime). He was then promoted to Sergeant and worked in Hertford, Watford and Rickmansworth. He said: I have a passion for actively disrupting criminality and enjoy meeting a variety of people, which will assist me greatly in this role. I am a firm believer that to effectively police a community we need the help and assistance from those who live there. Please let us know about any suspicious activity and support your local Neighbourhood Watch scheme. During his career, Rory has been involved in policing the London riots, the Olympic Games as well as other high profile events. Sergeant Arnott lives in Hertfordshire and enjoys keeping fit, playing football and travelling, having spent his recent 30th birthday in Las Vegas. Public Meeting and AGM Park Street Neighbourhood Watch are holding a public meeting on Tuesday October 18 th at the Baptist Church on Penn Road. The guest speaker, Julie Lloyd, the Neighbourhood Watch scheme coordinator for Herts Police, will be covering the topic of cybercrime, much in the news recently following the hack of the Internet giant Yahoo. With nearly six million fraud and cyber-crimes committed last year in England and Wales Julie s advice is something we all need to listen to. The meeting will start at 8pm but tea and coffee will be available from 7:45 so get there early. Local volunteers will be standing for election to your small but dedicated committee at the AGM. The committee meet monthly to drive NW forward. We are saying thank you to Gavin Dixon (Mount Drive) and Colin Everitt (Mayflower Road) who have stood down. We also must thank our hard working Chairman, Dennis Cowen, while remaining on the committee Dennis has retired as our chairman. If you care about safety, or think you could offer something to the community, then please come along to one of our committee meetings and see what we do. There are over 100 other local volunteer Good Neighbours, often called coordinators, in Park Street who deliver our printed newsletter to the 1,700 plus households who have joined Neighbourhood Watch, welcome new arrivals to the area, help update the OWL database and collect donations. Many hands make light work as they say. You won t therefore be surprised that we need new Good Neighbours from time to time to fill gaps and take-over from others who move away or no longer feel they can help. If this is something you would like to do then please drop PSNW an at psnhw@yahoo.co.uk With your help we can make the community stronger and safer together. 2

3 Crime Focus Reducing Burglaries Last year 2015 saw the first rise in burglaries in our area for over five years. We know how distressing a burglary can be for victims and want to do everything we can to get back on the downward trend we had been experiencing. The good news is that domestic burglary is one type of crime that we as residents can do a lot to prevent and our last newsletter carried lots of advice, but here we explore another tactic. Burglars are creatures of habit often returning to the same area or even the same property that they have burgled in recent weeks. There are a number of reasons this happens, they perhaps have seen something they want to return to steal, people will often replace valuables with new ones in the weeks following the original burglary and the burglars are now familiar both with the area and the property. As an example the Guide Dog offices in Park Street were burgled on two successive nights in August. One way to counter this is a tactic called Cocooning where for a few weeks after a burglary residents are alerted in the immediate vicinity and take extra precautions such as checking doors, ensuring windows are closed and locked, setting burglar alarms at night and while out, as well as being extra vigilant. People should not hesitate to contact the police if they see something suspicious. PSNW can help this to work by alerting the people in a road promptly if there has been a burglary near them but first we need victims to let us know. We won t pass on any of your personal details but we d really like to know the key details like when the crime occurred, how they got in and anything else that might help prevent future crime. PSNW can also help, after a burglary, with details of local locksmiths and alarm companies who our members tell us are reputable. We can even help with issues like property marking valuables for residents in the Cocoon and provide advice on security lighting or free property registration services. If the situation warranted it and there was support in the community, we d investigate if a citizen patrol could be established to act as a visible deterrent and extra eyes for the police who can t be everywhere. So if you become a victim do let us know by ing psnhw@yahoo.co.uk 3

Criminals are increasingly stealing vehicles and passing them off as genuine through a process known as cloning. We explain how to ensure you re not caught out.

4 Criminals are increasingly stealing vehicles and passing them off as genuine through a process known as cloning. We explain how to ensure you re not caught out. Car buyers are being warned to avoid falling victim to the growing menace of vehicle cloning a crime that could leave them thousands of pounds out of pocket. Police in England have recently smashed a national cloning ring which had carried out frauds worth more than 2 million. ID fraud for cars Cloning involves vehicles being stolen and then effectively being given a new identity. Although one gang has been brought to justice, experts say that there is evidence that cloning is on the rise in the UK and buyers should therefore be on their guard. Criminals disguise the 17-digit Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the stolen car and then use a stolen V5 logbook in an attempt to legitimise its identity. In this way, it is much harder to check that a vehicle up for sale has been acquired illegally. No chance of money back If someone buys a cloned car which is later identified as having been stolen, they face having the vehicle returned to its rightful owner with no chance of getting their money back. Police arrested six people at addresses in Leeds, Bradford and Bournemouth in connection with the theft and cloning of 180 vehicles and believe the gang had been operating for almost seven years. Spokesman Detective Superindendent Pat Twiggs said: The operation was focused on vehicles being stolen, primarily in the south of England, without keys using specialist equipment. 4

5 Not just premium cars They were then transported to Leeds where they were professionally cloned using the identities of legitimate vehicles and sold to innocent buyers through used car publications and websites. Police recovered an Aston Martin Vantage worth 38,000 and an Audi Q7 worth 16,000, showing the range of prices and just how much consumers have to lose on buying a clone. But it s not just premium cars that are at risk from cloning: every used car buyer needs to be aware of the very real threat of cloning. Do your homework Many buyers are just too trusting and buy a car on face value, which could cost them dearly, used-car buyers should ensure they view the vehicle at the registered keeper s address as shown on the V5 logbook. They should be wary of any vehicle which is being sold at around 70% of the market value or lower, and should also avoid paying by c ash if possible. Cloning to escape prosecution Finally, buyers should check whether the V5 logbook is genuine via DVLA records to ensure the logbook has not been recorded as stolen. Reports suggest that cloned cars are also being used by criminals to avoid prosecution for motoring offences. In a recent case, a motorist from north London escaped a fine and points on his licence when he was able to prove that a BMW caught speeding in Lincolnshire was not being driven by him and had in fact been cloned. The motorist s innocence was demonstrated by anti-fraud firm APU, which used telematics data from the cloned vehicle to show it was still in London when the offence took place. APU spokesman Neil Thomas said: It s very satisfying to help out innocent motorists of course, but the real worry here is that cloning could be back on the rise again. It s usually linked to large-scale organised crime, and it s hard to stamp out because the clone is registered to the innocent owner s address, so you have to catch the crooks out on the road. However, we believe criminals are increasingly using cloned cars so that innocent drivers shoulder the blame for their inexcusable driving. 5

6 Community Matters Burglar Alarms Have you ever heard someone s burglar alarm going off and wondered what was going on? There are two types of alarms, monitored alarms that are connected to a call centre and that can alert a key holder or the police or unmonitored alarms are either Bells Only or ones that contact you if there s a break-in. Most modern alarms will sound a Bell for 20 minutes and then stop before re-setting themselves and this is because in some circumstances they can be triggered without there being a break-in. This is fine if it is a single false alarm but if the cause is a spider crossing over a PIR sensor it can easily be re-triggered causing the alarm to sound again. In one case a local resident had gone to the US on holiday when neighbours noticed his alarm began to go off and then go off again and again keeping them awake at night. Someone knew the owners address and contacted them. The embarrassed owner told their neighbour their security code before posting a set of keys back to the UK so the house could be checked and the alarm silenced. Would you know what to do if an alarm was sounding near you and if you have an alarm does someone you trust have a spare set of keys for just such eventualities? St Albans District Council have the responsibility for dealing with noise nuisance and have been known to force entry to deal with faulty alarms. Would you trust SADC or Neighbourhood Watch to hold the details of your key-holder so they can be contacted in a case like this? Moving/Moved Home? Have you or a neighbour near you moved in the last twelve months? With over 1,700 people s homes registered in the village on OWL with addresses and or phone numbers, keeping all this information up to date is quite a task. We know there are some people who don t have and don t want a computer or smartphone bu t the vast majority of homes now have at least one person who uses . However, there are over 300 people in the village who get OWL messages only by phone!!! Because there is a charge for phone calls this is an additional cost to the police and, in turn, us as taxpayers. Some of this money we suspect could be saved if people were to register an address and they in turn would get a much better and we believe more convenient service as a result. Please help us by taking a few minutes to check your details by logging on to OWL at and then visit the My Details page. If you need help logging on, or want to give us your current home or address then please psnhw@yahoo.co.uk or call If you have a new neighbour make sure they know about Park Street Neighbourhood Watch, please ask if they ve already joined the Watch in your road and registered with OWL. Together we can make the local community more confident and even safer. 6

7 999 or 112 Which to use? In Summary 112 is the pan European emergency number, 999 & 112 are exactly the same in the UK. Use either one, and you will get the same service, with the same location details passed to emergency services irrespective of which one you dial. It is a myth that 112 is better than 999. But, if you want to know a bit more about the 112 myth, read on. Confusion Reigns If I speak to ramblers about calling for help some believe that dialling 112 is better than 999, the theory being that 112 sends location information to emergency services. That puzzled me, it didn't sound right that 999 had become inferior when it's the number that we all know to call for help. Many people, in positions of "outdoor authority" quoted the same line. So I did some research... The Bottom Line In the UK, 999 and 112 do the same thing; connect you to the emergency services. Neither number has priority over the other, and neither number provides location information better than the other. They are the same. Continue using 999 in the UK and you will have no issue. Ofcom issued a consultation paper in 2013 on the subject of location information, and how it could be enhanced further in the future. Within the paper there is clear reference to the fact that 999 and 112 are the same. About 999 As a reminder, the well-known 999 service in the UK was established in 1937 and it was the world's first single emergency number. It continues to be the best known number for emergency services within the UK. Children get taught 999 and it has been adopted in 17 other countries from Bahrain to Zimbabwe. Why Introduce 112? 112 is the pan European standard number for contacting the emergency services and was in troduced to the UK over 16 years ago, to run in parallel with 999. At the time of introduction it was recognised that member states of the EU could also keep their existing emergency services number, as any permanent change would likely lead to some people being unable to call for help as they may not know the 'new' number. Well that s true. A BBC news article published in 2012 states that many people are unaware of 112 use in Europe, so I assume even fewer people know that it works in the UK. What About 101? 101 is the national number in the UK for the police when it is not an emergency and should be used to report crime and other concerns that don t need an immediate blue light response. It will put you through to the local force wherever you are in the country unless you ask to be put through to a specific force like Herts Police. It does not work if you are abroad. 7

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