The familiar faces helping boost confidence in policing across Wiltshire
Neighbourhood Policing Teams were introduced in Wiltshire at the start of 2024
A commonly used phrase around Policing is "trust and confidence".
But how does Wiltshire Police go about gaining the trust and confidence of the public?
One way is through it's Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPT), who provide familiar faces to communities across the county.
NPT's were reintroduced at the start of 2024 by Chief Constable Catherine Roper, as part of the Force's improvement journey, after being placed into Special Measures by His Majesty's Inspectorate in 2022.
We got the opportunity to join PC Tom Newman and PCSO Alice Moore as they visited Warminster town centre, to see how they interact with the community.
After visiting local businesses, PC Newman told Greatest Hits Radio about the role.
"It has so many different aspects to it," he said, adding: "You're not just responding to reports that the public are calling in, but you're going out and problem solving."
It allows officers to look at longer-term issues, that may prevent people from visiting certain areas of a community due to the behaviour or activity taking place there.
PC Newman said: "By us going out and engaging with members of the public, it builds up that rapport, we can reinstall confidence that might have been lost in policing and allow the public to actually come to us about issues."
He said that officers operate in a "prevention style", preferring to engage with the community, find out what the concerns are and tackle them before they can become a more serious problem.
"It might not be entirely for the police to resolve those issues. It might be that we need engagement and buy in from the local council housing associations.
"But as a result of us having got that initial information, we can then disseminate that to our partner agencies and work closely with them to resolve the issues and actually create a better environment for those people living in that community, or even victims of that circumstance," PC Newman explained.
Unlocking vital information
Since their introduction 18 months ago, PC Newman says the NPT's have helped give the public more confidence to report issues to officers.
He told us that having a regular port of call and a familiar face was reassuring to communities, whereas previously they may have ended up with different officers, who may have handled things differently to the one before.
PC Newman said: "There is so much Intel information in out in the community that people won't always readily give that up until they are satisfied that actually they're giving that information to the right person and they're going to be safeguarded in relation to that.
"So giving the members of the public that consistency allows them to open up to us."
He is encouraging people to report concerns to their local officers, saying there's "no harm" in doing so.
"If it's not necessarily a crime and it's not for the police to be able to deal with 9 times out of 10, we know somebody that can help you with that.
"At the same time as we are intelligence led, we don't know what we don't know. And if people aren't coming to us and telling us that there's an issue in an area, we won't necessarily know about it to be able to step in and intervene."