Caroline goes that extra mile to help

Caroline goes that extra mile to help

6 November 2013

WHEN Caroline Owens goes home at night she often worries about the people she has met that day. As a police constable she regularly comes across the victims of anti-social behaviour and crime, and at times she says it’s “heartbreaking”.

Rather than dwell, however, she prefers action, and her dedicated efforts on the Downpatrick beat have just been recognised by the PSNI.

Constable Owens was named runner-up in the Police Officer of Year category of the annual Policing with the Community Awards.

She was nominated by a member of the public in recognition of her commitment to the area with Downpatrick Neighbourhood Policing Team, which was also shortlisted for the Neighbourhood Police Team of the year.

Constable Owens’ runner-up award focused on her work in the Meadowlands Estate in Downpatrick — once a no-go area for police — and the Knocknashinna area of the town, where she works closely with young people to organise diversionary sport activities as an alternative to anti-social activity.

She was also recognised for assisting the Special Olympics group in Down with their fundraising efforts.

Constable Owens began her career with Downpatrick PSNI’s Response Team six years ago, before moving over to the Neighbourhood Policing Team three years later.

She says it’s a move that has suited her desire to come up with long term solutions to problems.

“Part of that is trying to establish connections with the community, you get to meet people,” she said.

In relation to Knocknashinna — where large groups of youths recently gathered at a new playground and subjected it to drunken vandalism — she said her job was to bring a situation under control that should have been nipped in the bud some time ago.

“It started off with kids hanging about in the area, then it became that everyone started drinking and there was low level criminality,” she said.

Constable Owens said people were sometimes reluctant to phone the police when it was “just kids”, but that a more menacing 50 to 60 strong group had begun to gather at Knocknashinna.

“It got to the point when people living nearby felt in fear of living in their own home,” she said. “It was not until then that people started coming forward.

“It is heartbreaking when you see people having to live — people in their 60s and 70s and older — in the community they were brought up in so scared.”

Constable Owens said she made her presence felt in the area, encouraging people to ring her whenever any trouble started, and convincing them she would take it seriously.

She said during her visits local residents began talking to each other about the problem, and that the youths in turn were advised on what activities were available to them in the area.

Constable Owens also helped organise a public meeting in the Saint Patrick Centre to discuss the issue, following which a residents’ group was formed.

“From our point of view these are worth their weight in gold,” she said. “These are people we can contact.... information can flow down.”

She went on to explain that when the community came together and publicity surrounded their problems, parents started forbidding their children to hang out at the play park.

In the Meadowlands estate, however, it is not necessarily young people causing the trouble, according the officer.

Acknowledging problems of “antisocial behaviour, drugs and intimidation”, Constable Owens said their main goal was making people in the estate feel they could contact them.

“Five years ago the estate in Downpatrick was somewhere you could not go for a beat,” she said, pointing out recent progress in building relationships with government and policing bodies.

Lamenting the often heard ‘police in Downpatrick know who’s involved’ phrase, she said it was a case of building trust and hoping people would have the confidence to report crime to them.

“We just started by showing we were not afraid,” she said of their Neighbourhood Policing beats. “Whatever time of day or night.”

“We have had fireworks thrown at us,” she added, pointing out they were simply relieved to learn the bang was nothing more serious.

“Nobody was injured. Only the kids realised we were going to come back regardless. There is nowhere in Downpatrick the PSNI won’t go.”

Constable Owens recently helped organise a Diversion Through Sport scheme in Meadowlands as well as organising a cleanup of the estate, which police attended.

She said it was important for the 80 or so houses in the estate to feel a sense of community before tackling anything else, and to know they were not just controlled by “one or two individuals”.

“I think there is still a lot more work to be done, we are only at the start of dealing with it,” she added.

Busy thinking about what’s next on the agenda, Constable Owens said she sometimes finds herself thinking “I wonder, would this help?” when her shift is long over.

“You get very involved with people in community policing,” she said. “You get really into the people you are working with and you want to do everything you can to help them.”

Despite appearing a natural at the job the former history student said her career in the PSNI was a “complete accident”. Working in a coffee shop, she said her boss, a former policeman, noticed her way with the customers and suggested the police as a career.

“Fermanagh is the area I come from and I did not know anyone who had ever been in the police when I joined,” she said.

“I did not really know what I wanted to do with my life.”

And while the PSNI may have seemed a more attractive proposition when she first joined up, she says she has “no regrets” in the light of increasing dissident republican activity.

“You cannot let a fear of what might happen stop you from doing what you want to do,” she said, adding that the thank-you she received in the form of her award nomination was a great boost.

“It was lovely to be nominated,” she said. “For someone to take the time to say you are good at your job — I’m very chuffed.”