Cumbria Police

An update from your Neighbourhood Policing Sergeant

Engaging with young people is an important part of our role, and we regularly visit schools to speak with pupils on how they can keep themselves safe, including online and on our roads.
We have also conducted a number of warrants in Millom targeting drug use and supply.

As always, any information from the public is welcome and helps us keep the community as crime-free as possible. The reporting options are at the bottom of this update.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)

The prevention of violence against women and girls continues to be a priority for us.The neighbourhood policing teams across Cumbria will be leading on the Safer Spaces strand of this policing strategy to keep women and girls safe. During May we will be widening this activity in highlighting to our communities the response we are committed to moving forward. This will help us not only tackle areas of high harm and violence, but we can use this to engage with women and girls in our communities. We will be working closely with licensed premises within key night time economy areas to ask for their support in advertising the StreetSafe reporting tool.

StreetSafe

The Government launched StreetSafe, an online tool to allow people to flag places where they have felt unsafe, and describe factors that caused them concern, including anti-social behaviour or environmental reasons. This can range from poorly-lit paths to public harassment, these are then raised with our policing team to determine whether or not a crime has been committed. We will work with partners to address any issues raised. If there are any public areas where you feel unsafe due to environmental issues e.g. poor street lighting, abandoned buildings, vandalism etc. please report these at www.police.uk and click the StreetSafe link halfway down the page.

Please note ‘StreetSafe’ is not for reporting crime or incidents.

Youth antisocial behaviour is also continuing in Millom and Haverigg and patrols are continuing to deal with those responsible. We have identified the young people responsible for the recent issues in Haverigg and we are working closely with Millom Town Council and local schools to help resolve the issues. Putting a child through the criminal justice system is a last resort and will only be used where proportionate to the offences committed. We work hard with the young people so they understand the consequences of their actions and we focus on preventing reoccurrence of the problematic behaviour. We are appealing directly to parents to assist in reducing such behaviour by knowing where their children are and what they are up to. Antisocial behaviour is not purely a police problem and parents have a responsibility to ensure that their children conduct themselves appropriately whilst out in public.