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Crime Time

Transcript of Crime Time aired on the 19 September 2008 on Salford City Radio

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Fiona: Good morning.

Chris: Good morning. You alright?

Fiona: I am, you are not so well are you?

Chris: I am not very well no, so I wont be speaking much today, you’l be pleased to know. So I’ll leave it to you.

Fiona: And there no Glyn today.

Chris: So what’s coming up on the show then?

Fiona: Yes it Crime Time again, Glyn’s deserted me for the next 2 weeks, off on his holidays. peace and quiet…

This weeks our two special guests are Louise Averill, who is the head of the Housing Crime Reduction team within Housing Connections and her very experienced Surveyor colleague, Linden Hamblett, so we’ll be discussing  how we work together to reduce domestic burglary across Salford and stressing on what help is available to victims of burglary in Salford. It’ll be fascinating because we got horrible burglary problem at the moment.

Chris: Its not getting better is it.

Fiona: Insecurities are going down yes, so that message is getting through.

Fiona: A very warm welcome to Louise and Linden, good morning.

Louise: Good morning.

Linden: Good morning.

Fiona: You both settled now, calm.

Louise: Not quite, but we’ll get there.

Fiona: We’ll be gentle with you, we are always gentle on crime time.

Chris: Yeah right. (laughter)

Fiona: You actually work for housing connections.

Louise: Yes we do.

Fiona: Can you just explain who or what are Housing Connections and where are they based?

Louise: We are a division of Salford City Council, which delivers a number of housing services across the city. These are broken down in three areas. We are under safer homes safer living, then there’s the Anti Social Behaviour team who fall under that, they deal with getting ASBO’s and sort of taking cases to the court amongst other things and there’s service for independent living which includes the likes of Care on Call and the wardens services and sheltered schemes. There’s housing choice which includes the homeless service and housing advise choice based lettings.

Fiona: So it is a big team, isn’t it?

Louise: There’s quite a few, we are based at Emerson house, the head office, but then the other services are based around the city.

Fiona: So you are linked to Salford City Council.

Louise: Yes we are.

Fiona: There’s an awful lot of work going on through every sort of age group throughout Salford.

Louise: Yes its every service within Salford, which comes under the housing connections, sort of looking to improve, there’s also the innovation service development team, and they look how we can improve our services so that residents get high quality of service that they deserve.

Fiona: Definitely, so you actually work for the housing crime reduction team. Can you just tell us what your main roles are within housing crime reduction.

Louise: Primarily it’s to reduce the number of forced entry burglaries within Salford but obviously the side effects are to make residents feel safer in their homes , to empower residents and provide information to help them feel safer at home and make houses more secure and also to help in reducing other crimes like anti social behaviour and other crimes.

Fiona: It’s all based around housing crime, isn’t it.

Louise: It is yes.

Fiona: Louise & Linden, I know that you do a lot of work for victims of burglaries , working in partnership with ourselves, myself and Glyn, can you explain how that works?

Louise: As you are aware, you send us referrals, on a daily basis, of forced entry burglary victims. Those victims are then sent a letter from ourselves where we offer a service where we will carry out security assessments on the property, identifying what weaknesses there are and have those improved, and things we look at are burglar alarms, window locks, door locks, security lights, strength of the door and things like that and then have those implemented. We also do scheme works in areas of high burglaries. So we sort of look at citywide, see where the burglaries are, and carry out a site survey there where we look at fencing round the block of flats. Linden is looking at off road bike problems around Little Hulton area, that is quite a problem for a lot of residents there. We’ve done environmental works, defensive planting, cutting back trees so as to increase light and we do group target hardening, when I say target hardening, it is the locks, burglar alarms and lights, but we look at the whole street as opposed to just a single property and then offer that to a number of people.

Fiona: Linden, I don’t want to put you in a spot, but can you tell us what you have done to reduce off road biking in Little Hulton.

Linden: Just put barriers up and A frames and stuff like that.

Fiona: that can reduce the speed these bikes can travel and it can put them off altogether.

Linden: It can be very dangerous, like one case in Little Hulton where children were playing football on Sunday morning and youths came on motorbikes and scattered the kids while they were trying to play Sunday league football. So…

Fiona: It’s not on, is it.

Linden: It is not on.

Fiona: You say it is very dangerous, anything can happen. We will talk about off road biking in later programmes specially coming up to winter, if you are considering buying your child an off road bike, so we can go to that later on, can’t we.

Louise: Please don’t buy them, that’s the answer to the problem, they can be dangerous.

Fiona: We touched on and I think we are trying to get this to people now. When a person becomes a victim of forced entry burglary in Salford, you send them a letter, like we said before, we refer all the victims of forced entry burglaries to yourself and they will receive a letter offering them a free survey and any sort of free equipment you feel is necessary to fit.

Louise: With the initial letter, coz before we used to phone them straight away as soon as we got the referral we’d phone. We found out that they thought we were cold calling and trying to sell them something. So now we send out the letter and wait for a day or two, so that they have the information and know it is a genuine call, we phone to make an appointment. So we send an initial letter telling them about our services and it gives them an opportunity to phone us if they want to do so, then we make several phone calls to them at different times of the day to try and catch them in. Then we send a final letter, but unfortunately we have a very low take up of this service which is strange really.

Fiona: It is running about 30% – 35% at the moment isn’t it?

Louise: We are trying to improve the service working with yourselves now all the ‘unable to contact’s’ which is where we phone them and send them letters and they are just not getting back to us. We are sending them back to yourselves so that local PCSO’s can hopefully knock on their doors and say, look here’s a genuine service, take it up, it is well worth it.

Fiona: We have quite a low rate of repeat victimisation of domestic burglary, haven’t we, but this could reduce it even further, if people would take this offer. I know some people, I think we found before when we asked people , its either they are living in a rented accommodation, I don’t think they think it is their responsibility, plus if people have got contents insurance, the insurance company will send somebody around pretty quickly, but that will only be basic improvement wont they.

Louise: I think as well even though we are sending letters, I don’t think people as well believe it. I think they think this cant be true as its free. People get this information and then delay calling, and eventually they either forget to call or loose the letter. So its important to call as soon as you get the letter from us. Secondly it is easier for people to call us because our offices are manned from 08:30 to 17:30, so there will be someone there to answer your call. When we call we wouldn’t know if you are at home to receive the calls. So the sooner you call the sooner we can start the works and your place will be secure soon.

Linden: Sometimes people lead very busy lives, so when they get their window repaired, they think it wont happen again. And when it does happen again, then they make the call the 2^nd time. So they become a repeat victim.

Fiona: So it is worth reiterating then, if you are a victim of burglary, when you get the letter, you  will get a letter from Housing Connection on the envelop, don’t just assume it is junk mail, don’t throw it away, open it up and make an appointment with Louise or Linden or Robert or Graham. Are you able to give your contact number?

Louise: Yes , I’ll give you one number coz it’ll be easier to remember, it is 0161 604 7720.

Fiona: We touched on what you do for first time victims of domestic burglary, what can you actually do to help the repeat victims.

Louise: As I said before, the repeat victims are very few, they tend to be repeats that we have not been to see, so they really get the same service as what a first timer would get in terms of alarms, locks and that. It is a repeat when we done work and they still broke in, we will look at the boundary of the property, the fencing the gate and on very rare occasions we have done retractable grills.

Linden: And that’s more when its not just burglary, it was something more involved, someone who’s been specifically targeted for a reason.

Fiona: You did a lot of work up on the Quarry Pond, didn’t you Linden.

Linden: We did, that’s about 4 years now.

Fiona: That work you did there had a real effect didn’t it. You did a lot of fencing and pick a strip, alarms, etc.

Fiona; You also got responsibility for alley gating, haven’t you.

Louise: Yes we have.

Fiona: Can you just explain the process which has to be followed and under what circumstances an alley gate can be installed. Is there a set criteria that you work to.

Louise: With alley gating, in order to put gates up, we have to have a gating order which restricts public right of way across the said alleyway. Then we have to get planning permission for the gates. Now in order to get a gating order, we have to sought evidence that one, these residents support the installation and two, this alleyway is used to facilitate anti social behaviour, high and persistent levels of ASB and crime either in the alley or it helps people burgle back of property. So what we do is at the beginning of the financial year, we see how he schemes works, we get the details of recorded crime coz at the moment we have got over 120 schemes requested. So it is a very popular service but we look at the ones with the highest recorded crime and take a selection of those depending on staff resources. Up to now this year we got around 25 schemes that we are currently working on. Linden is doing a few, Walkden north & Manchester road west and there’s a few dotted around the city, but they have to be high levels of recorded crime. So it is important that people who are having problems, to make sure they phone the police. We cant help unless we got the stats. The process takes around 5 to 6 months. It is quite a lengthy process as we have to get gating orders, the extensive consultation we do not just with local residents but also with other agencies as well.

Fiona: One last question, you do an awful lot of work for victims of doorstep crime, don’t you. What is available to people that might be vulnerable to door step crime.

Louise: If you are 70 or over in Salford, we provide the doorstep crime prevention package which includes a ‘viewcom’, a door viewer with an intercom, so you can see who is there as well as talk through the door, without opening it. Chain or door bar to the front and the rear door and also an additional lock just to increase security of the front door. Also information includes useful numbers to ring. So if someone comes to your front door saying they are from United Utilities or whatever, never take their word or the details on the card they hand you. To be honest , if they don’t have an appointment, they shouldn’t be calling on you anyway. Genuine companies wouldn’t send someone to you without a valid appointment. Or even if they do, they will be more than happy to come back when they have an appointment.

Fiona: Well, Thank you very much for coming on the show, and wish you good luck in your work. Moving on to some appeal for information. This was an armed robbery that took place at Barclays branch at Anchorage Quays at about 5 O’clock on Tuesday the 16 Sept. 3 men went into the Barclay’s branch, one was armed with a shotgun and another with a hammer. They actually threatened staff when they were inside the branch demanding the cash. One member of staff who was 6 months pregnant was grabbed by the arm and punched in the head, absolutely horrifying.. The offenders left the bank after a few minutes and they left in a dark blue Mercedes, which was later found abandoned near to the Broadway pub in Broadway, but fortunately no shots were fired and nobody was seriously injured. We got some brief description. The offenders were described as being roughly 5’8” tall, slim built and wearing dark clothing. All 3 were wearing balaclavas. Detective Sergeant Joanne Kay said nobody was injured in this robbery, but a pregnant woman was punched in the face and all of the victims have been left badly shaken. A number of witnesses have already come forward, but we still need more information to help us piece together the offenders movements in the moments after the robbery. So if you got any information, no matter how small, you might just be able to provide missing links and for that you can ring us on 0161 856 5351 or call CrimeStoppers on 0800 555111.

Fiona: We’ve got 2 new Neighbourhood Inspectors to welcome to the division. Inspector Dave Henthorne, who has joined the Salford Central Neighbourhood policing team replacing Insp. Allan Smith and Inspector John Kelly replacing Insp. Andy Sutcliffe at the Salford West Neighbourhood policing team. They will both be coming on our show in the next couple of weeks. Insp. Henthorne, I think, will be on the show on the 10^th of October. We haven’t arrange a date for Insp. Kelly yet.

So till the next time, its good bye from me.

This page was last updated on 30 September 2008

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