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I was first attracted to police volunteering ... I was an employee of the Avon and Somerset and I retired some 18 months ago
and after 4 or 5 weeks of retirement I got a bit bored, and started looking for something to do,
and an ex-colleague of mine, within the Avon and Somerset, mentioned Volunteering in Policing
which was something I wasn't aware of, and had no knowledge of, but I thought that would be ideal for me.
What I've been asked to do when I started to volunteer was to set up a scheme of gathering all the meetings etc
that all our Neighbourhood Team have to attend during the course of a month,
and because I am an ex-employee, I knew the IT systems and I knew the people to contact
so I was able to set up a system where I put on the computer all the meetings
and then every week I come into the police station, check the computer, check the dates,
and then send emails to the individuals concerned that they have a meeting to attend on such and such a date.
This relieves them of the problem of remembering so to speak.
What I do, I think the benefits to the community are - we all know that police officers and PCSOs have a lot of mundane paperwork and record-keeping to do, and this keeps them off of the street.
I think what I do relieves them of a certain amount of that, and allows them to be out in the community more than they would be otherwise
and it also assures - the particular stuff that I'm doing - assures them that they are seeing the people and the right people when they need to be seen,
and they are attending the meetings and not missing them, therefore they are able to be more active within the community
than they would be if they were sat in the police station carrying out all the functions that I seem to do for them.
I get a lot of satisfaction out of it, I get a lot of friendship and I maintain a lot of the friendship with the colleagues that I had before,
but also I'm now a member of the public and because of that I think I see what perhaps the police officers and the Police Community Support Officers don't see,
and I'm able to bring that into it, and I feel as if perhaps I've achieved and contributed something to their job and made it easier for them.
It certainly gives me something to do! (Laughs)