By T/Inspector Mark J Edwards
Hello again Newton Aycliffe, As I draft up this latest entry the weather has taken a turn for the worse and I rather suspect it won’t be long before we see the onset of snow (it’s certainly cold enough and that’s what the weather reports would have us believe). In the event of bad weather arriving I would strongly request that readers take great care out there when driving around on our roads. As we approach the season of festivity (aka; Christmas!) I would hate to see the good will and cheer offset by unnecessary road traffic collisions. Our new Inspector – Sarah Honeyman, has taken like a duck to water and has immersed herself into the waters of neighbourhood Policing effortlessly. Many of you may have already met her as Sarah is ‘getting out there’ and very keen to introduce herself to local residents, partners, businesses etc. In other news, our former town centre beat cop – Paul Rogers, has returned to us at Newton Aycliffe after leaving us some time ago to go off on secondment elsewhere. He’s back and has brought a wealth of acquired experience in other arenas with him. Also, as I type this a number of our PCSO’s have recently found out they’ve been successful at the ongoing Police Constable recruitment and at some point in 2017 we will be wishing three of them ‘good luck’ as they set sail on a new adventure. More on that at a later date.. Community Engagement – It’s the town’s annual Remembrance Day Parade this Sunday and – as usual, the NPT will be in attendance showing their support. Feel free to say hi to anyone from the team! The Mini-Police programme continues to go from strength to strength in Newton Aycliffe and again, readers may have seen posts on the NPT Facebook page highlighting some of the activities that our ‘youthful’ colleagues have been engaged in. The MiniPolice are funded by GAMP and the programme sees students from across four of our local schools assist the Police with a number of tasks. Crimewise – you may have seen recent appeals either in the media or on the NPT’s social media sites concerning an attempted robbery that took place at the Caygill Store on Greenlea Garth recently. This incident happened around 4.35 pm on Sunday October 30th when the suspect has entered the premises and made demands for the till to be opened before going on to assault a member of staff. The attacker subsequently left the shop empty handed after staff continued to challenge the male. I have attached an image of the suspect below whom we are naturally keen to identify.
