Hello all.

Well what a busy few days it's been as we go into the Bank Holiday weekend!

That's not to say I'm not normally busy because I am as there's a lot to do across the Marsh and it's not all bad either!

Many of you will be aware of the large police and ambulance presence in New Romney on Wednesday afternoon and all I can say regarding this is that it was an isolated incident which is under investigation. I popped along to it to assist my Local Policing Team colleagues with another Beat Officer PC Jamie Fisher then we went to Lydd Primary School to meet up with PC Kerry Duncan from the Child Centred Policing Team (CCPT) who are based at Folkestone Police Station in the Community Safety Unit.

Kerry and her colleagues run a police cadet programme involving schools from across the district and we went along with her to talk about a variety of subjects with the children who were an absolute delight with a few budding comedians amongst them!!

Then on Thursday we had the local elections and I was driving all over the Marsh popping in and out of the polling stations to make sure that all was well, which I'm pleased to say went without incident.

In between times I have been pestering residents and businesses for their CCTV whilst I've been looking into a couple of incidents some of which are self-generated/proactive policing by myself and some which are crimes that have taken place.

On the subject of CCTV, please can I ask you to consider the CCTV Registry, please see below

I know that I published the above recently but CCTV is a fantastic tool against crime.

I absolutely love CCTV and have asked many of you repeatedly for CCTV footage for various crimes and incidents that have happened and I know that sometimes it is a bit inconvenient but I've always had a really good response from those that I've asked and I am always very grateful for your assistance.

Being a Beat PC means that I can take a degree of ownership over ‘my patch’ and my colleague James is the same and pestering for CCTV even if the crime or incident that I'm looking into might not be directly involving the person who supplies the footage, it is all part of trying to keep our communities safe and crime to a minimum.

I have recently been trawling for CCTV in the Church Lane area of New Romney with regards to a theft of equipment from a commercial site and it is one very small cobwebbed clad camera that has given me my best lead, so even if you think that your footage might be insignificant it might just be what we're looking for.

CCTV has also really helped me recently with a careless driving incident that I'm investigating. This particular incident was reported to me by a resident who had dash-cam footage and what with the CCTV footage that I've got in addition, it will lead to the offending driver being reported for the relevant offences so although I'm not one of those Traffic Cops that have the lovely cars with all the bells and whistles (and a white hat) I do take road safety across the Marsh seriously but obviously the evidence has got to be present and available for me to take action and as ever, you can email me at 13183@kent.police.uk if you have anything that you want to bring to my attention that affects your quality of life and if I find that it's not a police matter I will always try and signpost you to the agency who is best placed to help.

That's it for now but I'll finish off with a photo I took yesterday which reminded me how lucky I am to have the Romney Marsh as my office!

Thank you

Steve.