Partnership working leads to safe arrest of male with knife in city centre
The BCRP has long said that true partnership working is the key to the success of preventing crime and disorder. The tools and advice that the BCRP provides to our members are the first step to success, but it also takes the hard work, dedication and proactivity of the people on the ground to bring home the goal. How does this work in practice? Well, let's set the scene by highlighting an incident of incredible partnership working that took place last week.
On Thursday 6th of January, Sussex Police were called on 999 about a male with a knife moving towards Brighton city centre after last being sighted on Western Road. Upon receiving the call, T/PS Alec Barrett, who was not in the city at that time, proactively shared the information and description of the male with the Business Improvement District (BID) Ambassadors via the BCRP’s secure BBMe instant messaging group. Eloise, one of the BID Ambassadors, was able to quickly respond to T/PS Barrett letting him know the teams were on the look-out.
Shortly afterwards, Stefan, one of the security guards from Waitrose, located the male in their car park and communicated this to both the BID Ambassadors and T/PS Barrett, again, using the BCRP’s BBM instant messaging app. The BID Ambassadors quickly made their way to the scene to keep the male under surveillance and control access and egress to ensure the male did not leave the area. Police had been despatched upon the initial sighting of the male by Stefan, and Mitch and Liam, two of the BID Ambassadors, were able to point the male out to the attending police officers when they arrived on scene. The male was safely detained by officers without injury and incident and the knife swiftly recovered.
T/PS Alec Barrett said of the incident, “This is yet another excellent example of the great working relationship BID Ambassadors and Sussex Police have with the aim of keeping the public and businesses safe within Brighton. With the essential assistance of security staff and BID officers, this male was quickly located and arrested without injury to anyone.”
”The fast acting and proactivity of T/PS Alec Barrett, the BID Ambassadors and Stefan from Waitrose helped ensure that a potentially dangerous individual was safely detained and removed from the city. It shows how utilising the tools provided by the BCRP, we can work together to keep our staff, customers and our city safe from harm.
Thank you to all involved in the incident last week, and for all of your hard work and dedication to your roles. You are all important and valuable assets to the community and we acknowledge your efforts to help keep Brighton a safer place for all”.