Your Role as a Member of Neighbourhood Watch

The idea of the Neighbourhood Watch is just that – to watch, NOT to accost possible or actual villains, and to pass on information that could be helpful to the Police, our neighbours, or both.

Being a good neighbour, and by keeping an eye open for anything suspicious, you can help to make your community more secure. Being a good neighbour is nothing to do with being nosey. Help your neighbour, and your neighbour will help you.

These are some of the things you should report to the Police Station right away:

1. Strangers knocking on front doors or peering through windows and then disappearing around the back or loitering suspiciously.

2. Strangers hanging around the school, playing fields etc. and approaching children.

3. Open windows or doors in houses where owners are out or on holiday.

4. Strangers trying car doors.

5. Anything you believe is suspicious, like a suspicious caller to your door, or someone acting as a window cleaner asking if people are in or out during the day.

6. Strange vans or cars parked in unexpected places.

Incidents or concerns should be reported to the Police no matter how trivial they may be. Someone else may have the same shifty caller. If possible an accurate description of the people or cars e.g. registration number and colour, would be of great help. The telephone number to ring is 101 or 999 in real emergencies. All members who tell the call taker on the 101 number that they are part of NHW will be contacted by their local policing team and provided with an update on the result of the incident.

West Mercia Police now have NHW Pledge, details of which can be found on their Web Site. On the Home page enter NHW in the Search Query box then click on Watch Schemes. There is also a lot of other interesting information on the main site.