Thames Valley Police Team Up With LVS Ascot For Crime Prevention Campaign

29 Mar 2019

Pupils at LVS Ascot school have taken on the role of educating the local community, by teaming up with Thames Valley Police to produce their latest crime prevention campaign. A-level criminology students at the all-ability independent school created a series of short videos in December covering a range of advice to cut the risk of burglaries, which have now been seen by thousands of Berkshire residents on social media.

As part of Thames Valley Police Bracknell’s Winter Burglary Awareness campaign, the students directed and filmed four videos. These educated Berkshire residents through a series of tips to think about ways to secure their properties, minimise risk by hiding items from view and ensuring dark areas around their houses are well lit, and finally encouraging them to report anything they see that might be suspicious. The videos were seen thousands of times on the Thames Valley Police and Thames Valley Police Bracknell twitter accounts which have over 200,000 followers between them.

With LVS Ascot’s goal to inspire students, Sergeant Cassandra Oswald was invited to take part in a criminology lesson and, with coursework including planning a crime prevention campaign, a discussion centred around how best to deliver this which led to the idea of teaming up to create a real campaign for use in the build up to Christmas. To combat a rise in residential burglaries in the winter months, both nationally and within the Berkshire area, the school then worked on storyboards and filming in conjunction with Thames Valley Police to produce the final films which created direct engagement between the police and local community.

Neighbourhood Sergeant Cassandra Oswald said: “The LVS Ascot students were a pleasure to work with. They were motivated and engaged in the process, and came across as professional. They gave me a real insight into how some of our younger communities view the police and policing, and we would love to work with the school again on different campaigns in future”.

LVS Ascot Principal Christine Cunniffe said: “Our aim is to inspire independence in students, and to give them the opportunity to take responsibility for educating the local community on such an important topic as crime prevention does just that. We would like to thank Thames Valley Police for working with us on this project to equip our students with the insight and support to produce such a successful project, and are glad they were so delighted with the end result”.