Tigers Bay & Mountcollyer Policing & Community Safety Partnership

A cross community football team that continues to promote community relations through sport, between young people. This has been an extremely successful and popular project. Junior football teams are now being developed in the same manner to which the senior team has been developed. A fine example of community/police partnership work which has made a very positive impact on reducing sectarian views and behaviour with our young people.

The ARV unit is a highly specialised response team which covers all of Northern Ireland from several key bases. They have specific training to use items such as tazers and baton guns and are highly skilled in first aid. The officers discussed with the group the types of incidents they have to deal with ranging from street fights, knife attacks and what types of incidents are most common locally. The players got the opportunity to ask questions about any myths or misconceptions they maybe had, and the wide range of consequences there can be, for example the category of some crimes and the punishments attached.   As the group consisted purely of teenage boys there were, as might be expected, a lot of detailed questions about the range of weapons they had to use, what they did and if they have ever had to use them. The officers also shared some of the smaller details involved in their work which wouldn’t make the news, relaying how much one small decision such as carrying a weapon for personnel protection, can affect the rest of a young person’s life. One player noted: “I couldn’t believe when they told us about some of the stabbings they have attended, how small the wound was, only a couple of centimeters but that person lost their life, you assume it would have to be more, I was really surprised, it’s definitely not like anything on TV.” The players were able to explore the armed response vehicle itself, under supervision, and get their hands on some of the equipment deployed by the officers and get an idea of what protection they have to wear at all times, the levels of fitness and correct frame of mind that the officers have to be in on every call out. All were keen to take part in similar workshops in the future, as actually getting to talk directly with each other was a worthwhile experience for both parties building on the relationships made through the Limestone United team and the Neighbourhood Officers.

Neighbourhood officers based at York Road have attended a number of drug programmes involving young people from various youth clubs in the New Lodge area. The programme involved talking to the group about drug abuse and known pitfalls of drug usage, concluding with a working scenario involving a ‘mock’ stop, search, arrest and interview of the suspect. This proved to be very interesting and created a good general discussion afterward which was well received by all those taking part.