People in South Devon can now contact their Beat Manager twenty four hours a day, 7 days a week, and get in instant response telling them when to expect further action.

John Reynolds of StopCrime explains the system that has been launched this week that allows the Community Officer to get an overview of what is happening in their community:

With community engagement at the core of modern policing, the problem is how can it be done in a managed way. Home Secretary Charles Clarke believes police will be able to respond faster to anti-social behaviour and crimes in local trouble spots by giving every household in the country (by 2008) the phone number and email address of their local ‘bobby on the beat’.

While in principal that might have some merit there are clearly issues around
such an idea. The main one being how does an officer manage the information and keep the public in the loop at the same time? Currently you can write a letter to your local officer, visit a surgery or call them on the phone.

The system in use in Devon and Cornwall allows two way communication
with the public by text messages and email and it's the two way part that is
interesting and has always been the underlying ethos behind the scheme. "As a
member of the public I wanted to be able to contact my Beat Officer at anytime and get an instant response so I knew that the message had been received and what further action I could expect. I also wanted to receive information from my
Beat Bobby about things that were happening where I live", said John.

The system, launched this week, allows the Community Officer to get an overview of what is happening in their community by just checking their messages. They have the ability to run surveys for example or send out newsletters direct to the local community. Raise public alerts at anytime from anywhere. They can contact one or one thousand people in their area in a matter of minutes by text message and or email. People join their local ‘Beat Bobby’ scheme after getting the pin code from their local officer.

"I have never had the need to contact my local officer and hopefully never will,
said Mr Reynolds. However it is reassuring to know that if bogus callers are in
my area for example I will now be one of the first to know about it and can inform others. It's also very reassuring to actually get an instant personalised reply to a message that I send to my Beat Bobby."

Currently the Beat Bobby scheme is part of stopcrime.co.uk but it could soon be a separate online solution. Further information can be obtained from Mr Reynolds at john@stopcrime.co.uk

Will there be more than one because itll be hard to get vols if your local busy body kept ringing you at 3am to tell you theres a suspicious cat outside her house etc

how do you get to beat a bobby are they lending us thier truncheons now lol

Must be some sort of rotation because these guys gotta sleep

SLEEP ? NO WAY!!!