AS WE APPROACH Christmas, I wanted to take this opportunity to focus on some of our planned activity and provide some advice on protecting yourself financially as we see a rise in online frauds this time of year.

Our Christmas activity comes under the banner Operation Frankincense. This initiative is where we have additional officers out patrolling in the community, visiting licensed premises and providing reassurance.

This year, due to the current challenges, I am putting a greater emphasis on private space violence to focus our efforts to protect people in their homes.

Over the next few weeks, my officers will be checking bail conditions are being adhered to, visiting violent and domestic offenders, and ensuring that warrants are enforced for those who have been involved in previous violent offences or Christmas-related acquisitive crimes. We want everyone to have a great Christmas and rest assured we will do all we can to keep you safe.

Fraudsters are exploiting Christmas bargain-hunters who have switched to online shopping. The latest intelligence shows a rise in purchase scams, particularly on Christmas gifts and home improvement products. In these cases, a customer pays in advance for goods or services that are never received.

The following is some straight forward advice to help protect you when shopping online:

  • Choose carefully where you shop. Seeing a padlock in the address bar is a good thing, but it’s not a guarantee that the website itself is legitimate. Check out the customer reviews before making any purchases;
  • When making purchases online, use a credit card if possible, as most major credit card providers insure online purchases;
  • Only fill in the mandatory details on a website when making a purchase. Consider checking out as a ‘guest’;
  • Keep your accounts secure;
  • Watch out for suspicious emails, calls and text messages. Some of the emails, posts on social media accounts or texts you receive about amazing offers may contain links to fake websites, designed to steal your money and personal details. Think before you click;
  • Finally, if you’ve been a victim of fraud, scams or cybercrime, you can report this to us by calling 101 and contact your bank to seek advice. Alternatively, you can pop into a station or speak to my officers on the street.

With the current challenges around travelling and social distancing, my community officers will be holding pop-up events across our outlying towns and villages where you can come along and speak to us, report any crimes or incidents and get crime prevention advice. We also have a stock of shed alarms which we are supplying and fitting free of charge to our elderly and vulnerable residents, so please ask about these as well. We will be advertising our schedule of towns with dates and times on our social media channels in the coming days.