Maldon: A snapshot of life with your local policing team

 

From burglaries to domestic disputes, from reports of offensive weapons to high-risk missing people and sexual assaults - no two days are the same for our local policing team officers, who are the first police officers you are likely to see at an incident.

And Maldon Local Policing Team are no different. In the past couple of days, officers on the early shift have deployed to a variety of incidents, including arguments between partners and between siblings, a report of a concern for a man’s welfare – he was fine but we were happy to check that he was ok – accompanying an ambulance crew to a call because of the person’s previous history of threatening them with a knife and speaking to the worried mother of a high-risk missing person, conducting local inquiries on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.

And they made a ‘safe and well’ check on a girl, who returned to her care home after having been reported missing overnight, to ensure that no criminal offences had been committed against her and that she had not committed any herself.

One officer guarded the scene of a burglary until crime scene investigators had finished gathering evidence and then came across a broken-down vehicle causing an obstruction at the top of Market Hill in Maldon. He closed the road and called for assistance from nearby roads policing officers, who towed it to a garage.

 

PC Charlie Bell arrested a 34-year-old man who turned up at Maldon Police Office asking to speak to a police officer because he had been told we were looking to arrest him on suspicion of breaching a non-molestation order.

Many of the incidents they responded to in the past couple of days are fairly usual for a local policing team officer – it’s the people involved who make each one unique.

But slightly more out of the ordinary was the collision involving a bus and a car parked next to a shop South Woodham Ferrers. The car had been pushed into the front of the shop in Hullbridge Road, trapping the car driver. He was cut free by firefighters using specialist cutting equipment and taken to hospital by ambulance.

 

“We arrived at the same time as the ambulance so, while they attended to the car driver, Charlie and I checked on the bus driver as our main priority at any incident is to preserve life. A second ambulance crew then took care of him.
“Other officers from our LPT and roads policing team spoke to witnesses and made sure that no-one else who had been there when the collision happened was unaccounted for.
“We also closed the road to make it easier for the ambulance crews and the firefighters, who had to cut the car driver out.“
PC Jack Morgan

PC Charlie Bell came to Maldon in June but has served with Essex Police for almost three years, always on a local policing team.

 

“Every day is different and you help such a vast amount of people. Everyone needs the police at some point in their lives and if we can help one person every day then I think we are doing our job.
“Some jobs aren’t as they seem, sometimes. Sometimes they are worse, sometimes they are better.
Take the collision between the bus and the car – we thought we were going to something that wasn’t good. But he came out of the car just suffering from chest pains, which was very lucky but we’d been expecting the worst. It’s nice when it’s not the worst.
“Every job, there’s always something more behind it. We get the initial call and we have to go with the information from that but it’s when you sit down and talk to people to understand what’s gone on is when you get more information.
PC Charlie Bell

 

“Our officers have to be very dynamic in their approach to policing in this area because they can be dealing with a crime in a rural location, such as hare coursing, one minute and then get called to anti-social behaviour outside a town pub the next.
“The thing we all have in common is that we want to keep the residents of our district safe and arrest those people who are intent on causing crime in our communities.
“But we need those communities to help us to do so by reporting criminality to us when they see it, via our website or by phoning 101.
“Of course, if it’s an emergency or a crime in progress, then always ring 999. Here, that could include seeing fly-tippers in action and people stealing agricultural machinery, as well as a burglary or people arguing heatedly in the street.”
Maldon LPT sergeant Martin Andrews

 

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