Four new faces join Community Engagement team

Suffolk Constabulary now has four new Community Engagement Officers (CEO) in post working hard to ensure the force forges ever closer links with communities, individuals and partners.

The officers, which includes a new face in Bury St Edmunds, will be working closely with the Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs) to build on local engagement opportunities with our aim of keeping residents informed of what their police force is doing in their area.

PC Andre DeJongh, pictured above, replaces PC Paul Fox as the CEO for the Bury St Edmunds area as Paul is retiring from the police after 30 years of serving Suffolk’s communities within the force.

PC Hannah Creasey will be working in the Ipswich East area, allowing current CEO PC Rachel Partridge to focus her attention on the Woodbridge and Felixstowe area.

PC Diane Porter and PC Sarah George will be based in Hadleigh and the surrounding villages. PC Michael Small will continue his focus on Ipswich West area.

The CEOs use a number of methods to engage with communities from the traditional police surgeries, community meetings and ‘pop-up’ meetings to making more use of social media and new technology. We really want to find a way to engage with everyone in Suffolk and the CEOs are passionate about making this happen.

Each of the CEOs has a dedicated Facebook account for their locality where they can provide local information and highlight events, campaigns, initiatives and meetings. They also regularly tweet out updates on the local Twitter accounts.

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Cutler said: “We know that listening to our communities and providing information on what we are doing and what is happening in local areas is vital to effective policing and that is why we introduced the CEOs. They are an integral part of Safer Neighbourhood Teams and their role is always developing. All of our CEOs are absolutely committed to their role and we have seen fantastic work those in role already have achieved. I know that the Hannah, Diane, Sarah and Andre will work as passionately as their colleagues.

“Our digital platforms are a key method of informing and engaging with the people of Suffolk.  Our digital presence continues to grow with an average of 64,000 people viewing our force website each week – a 40% increase on 2018.

“We now have 70,000 followers on our Constabulary Twitter account and nearly 72,000 on our Facebook account.  We know the importance of using social media to ensure our engagement is as extensive as possible but other more traditional methods of visibility and contact are as important as ever to us and our communities.”

Sgt Steve Wright who oversees the work of the CEOs said: “I am really looking forward to the new CEOs joining us and contributing to the work. The Constabulary will have 12 officers in post and this means we can further support the Neighbourhood Teams and wider policing response across Suffolk in keeping all of our communities safe and ensuring we identify and arrest those offenders committing crime across the county.

The CEO is a uniformed operational role, operating from the nine existing locality bases with the officers’ working day and evening shifts.