Oh I will cover the One Stop Cat story in a separate post but thought it was more important to cover this first.
Towards the end of 2017, the SoBo Facebook page was getting more and more posts on crimes that have happened in the local area, and more and more observations of suspicious activity. At first glance it could have been that we have more members, because we topped the 5000 mark, and be down to perception rather than reality. Close inspection of the crime charts shows that there really is an increase.
A lot of posts on lead theft incidents, as well as tools from van and sheds being stolen.
Given the 5000+ members in the group, these crime posts were quickly lost in amongst all the general noise. I then made a new Facebook Group page solely for the purpose of having a place where people can post on Crime issues in the BH6 postcode.
From that, I made it my mission to get an appointment with the Dorset Police Crime Commissioner to raise awareness of what we were doing as a community, how strong and support the community was, and that we want to do more to protect ourselves.
I had that meeting and am waiting on their follow up as it sounds like their community teams can be more connected via Facebook and so on.
Website: BH6-CAT
Please note that the group is meant for posts on the BH6 postcode. The model can so easily be replicated for every other postcode prefix in the UK, but it takes people to spend some time on administering. I would love to see BH1-CAT, BH2-CAT, BH3-CAT and so on.
