Police Work With Southampton Students
13 September 2012, 06:17 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
Hampshire Police and Southampton Solent University have joined forces to help make student properties safer and students quieter, especially in the Polygon residential area where many students live nearby to families.
Neighbourhoods (SNT) police officers, including PC Jeanette Denton who is the engagement officer for the Polygon area, will be meeting up with the students during ‘Freshers Week’ to provide important household security tips and guidance on how to stay safe and not upset neighbours when they party or go out to local bars and clubs.
A/Insp Ryan Bartlett who is responsible for the Central Southampton area said: “Students’ homes can provide rich pickings for the opportunist burglar due to household insecurities. Through this initiative we want to highlight the importance of ensuring that students’ homes are not left insecure to prevent them from becoming victims of crime and that they stay safe.
“Many students have left home for the first time and are leading independent lives away from the family home. With them they bring expensive personal items like laptops, i-phones, televisions, games consoles and other expensive items that are appealing to burglars. We want to make sure that they all accept responsibility for their own property as well as their housemates by not leaving doors and windows insecure when they leave their rooms and ultimately their house or flat."
The officer added: “We also want to make students’ aware of the inconvenience they cause neighbours when the have noisy parties or return home after a night out in town. We want to get them to get to know and respect their neighbours who are often affected by loud anti-social behaviour which is often drink-fuelled. To help us achieve this we have launched Operation Shush alongside Op UniPol. Op Shush will specifically target anti-social behaviour and noise nuisance late at night and in the early hours. Many residents including young children and the elderly live and work in the City and need to sleep and get up early for jobs, school runs etc. A disruptive sleep pattern caused by noise impacts on them all and is unacceptable.”
In addition to speaking directly to the students during ‘Freshers Week’, SNT officers will be doing regular high visibility patrols around the Polygon area checking on properties and the behaviour of those who live in the area. Where behaviour is a considered anti-social, the offenders could be given an £80 fixed penalty notice.
