IN THIS week’s article, I would like to introduce Sergeant Garrett Hughes as the new community sergeant for the Haddington/North Berwick and Dunbar area.

Garrett has been working as a response sergeant in East Lothian for several years. He brings with him over 22 years’ policing experience, with almost all of it working in East Lothian.

Garrett grew up in East Lothian and still lives locally with his family. He is well known in the local rugby scene and still turns out for the veterans. He has informed me he was a decent player a few years ago but it takes him a good bit longer to recover from games these days!

Garrett is being joined in the community team by Constable Kiera Edmond, who started in March as the new Haddington community officer.

Kiera has gone coast to coast in her eight years’ police service, completing her first five years in Ayrshire before moving to East Lothian in 2021.

She has just recently returned to work from maternity leave after having a baby boy and is looking forward to her new role.

In more worrying news, policing teams have been called to an increasing number of incidents of anti-social behaviour in relation to youths causing issues at football matches in the county, especially in the Tranent area. These incidents have involved groups intent on causing disorder during or after these games.

This is a real shame, as I would encourage everyone to support their local clubs – I regularly enjoy going to see Dunbar United play. These clubs do a lot of good work for the local community and are often run by volunteers who should not have to tolerate disturbances to local games. East Lothian teams are doing well in their respective leagues, so the focus should be on the games, not a small element of youths.

Local officers are reviewing footage from the Tranent v East Kilbride match on the Easter weekend to identify those youths involved in disturbances and, once identified, they will receive a visit from officers. We are also working with local partners to divert the youths from this type of behaviour.

If you are responsible for young people who attend local games, I would appeal to you to talk to them about their behaviour and ensure that it is always responsible.

I hope that the second week of the Easter holidays has better weather than the first and people can get out and enjoy the county. I am aware of several flood warnings in the division in the past week.