Neighbourhood with Sergant Dave Thatcher – 6th March

Today has hands down been the best part of the placement so far. Today actually linked into my first placement which was with Inspector Nick Lindsey. It was about the suicide car park near Derriford A&E and Glanville mental hospital. I was partnered up with Sergeant Dave Thatcher. We got speaking about a lady called Maddie who is part of the council. She is a real believer in working along-side the police and trying to close down and prevent harmful places. Sergant and Maddie had a meeting with the people in charge of this car park, in aim to see if we can either get it shut down or get some fencing around each floor of the car park. Before the meeting started we were quoted £100,000 per floor to get the fencing round it. In the meeting we got some really positive outcomes for the car park, as we intended we would have bad ones. We could get fencing round each floor for a total of £38,000 for all 5 floors. We could also get CCTV on every floor for a total of £12,000 down from £96,000.

Today was a really positive day for me because I was able to use my confidence to sit in on a meeting that I wasn’t scheduled to sit on in. It was also amazing to be able to start off my placement learning the carpark and the horrific number of people who go their wanting to take their lives and seeing how much time the police put into this car. To finally getting and seeing the result we wanted all along. The carpark will be up and running safely and securely by the end of May. We also made a declaration that if the carpark wasn’t sorted we could shut it down. What a day!

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