Police urges residents to join East Riding Community Advisory Group
It's to maximise the communication and trust between Humberside Police and residents
Police are urging people living in and around Bridlington to join a Community Advisory Group.
The aim is to maximise trust and communication between the Humberside force and residents.
It will also help shape services in the future as well as exchanging views and discussing policing issues in the town and surrounding villages.
Police Constable Carl Osler, Community Cohesion Officer for the East Riding, said:
"Our core component of the police service is to serve its community and the best way we can do that is by effectively communicating with our community because ultimately we have some very, very important information to put out and it's from our community network that we actually get some of the best information on that.
"The police force has to work with its community and the community has to work with its police force. There's no other way around that. For us to be a more effective police service, we have to have really good communication with our community. It's not just positive engagement, if there's challenges to be made then we need to have that as well.
"If we have a policy which potentially isn't working then we need to get the challenges from the community to actually advise us as to why it's not working for them or their community group, because what may be relevant to the urban community may not be relative to the rural community. That's why the Community Advisory Group really needs to have those different members attending.
"One example I think which is very relevant at the moment is stop and search powers. Members of the community may well understand stop and search from the media, YouTube, Facebook etc, so another important function of the Community Advisory Group is to break down that misconception and miscommunication. When they actually find out what the full story it better educates them to better educate other people like a domino effect.
"All communities need to have a voice because if you don't have a voice then we don't know what's going on and if we don't know what's going on then we can't support and we can't provide that really good and effective service for everybody. For me, the key is that the more diverse members we get, the better engagement and rewarding Community Advisory Group we'll be able to have."
The group meets once every three months on a Thursday from 2pm to 4pm in various locations around the East Riding. Anyone who is interested is asked to email Carl on carl.osler@humberside.pnn.police.uk.