OWL – the Online Watch Link – is going from strength to strength in Gwent, with over 37,000 residents now signed up to receive messages directly from their local officers.
Funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Ian Johnston, OWL is a modern day Neighbourhood Watch initiative and enables local officers, residents and volunteers to easily communicate with each other.
There are now over 5500 watches running on OWL across the Gwent Police area.
To encourage more local residents to take advantage of the system and stay up to date with their local officers and neighbourhood watches, existing OWL members are being offered the chance to win a £50 shopping voucher to sign up their friends and family.
All they need to do is register to enter the competition on the OWL website from tomorrow (Friday 4th April) – www.owl.co.uk/gwent – and they will be e-mailed details directly. Individuals that sign up the highest numbers will be in with the chance of winning a voucher.
There are lots of advantages of being a part of Owl, including:
- Neighbours watching out for one another and working together to report suspicious activity.
- Direct messages from your local officers, warning of local incidents, appealing for information and offering crime prevention advice.
- It acts as a deterrent to burglars, car thieves and unscrupulous door to door callers.
- Support from your local Neighbourhood Watch Coordinator and your Community Support Officer.
Residents can also choose how they would like to be communicated with – the vast majority choose to receive messages via e-mail. But for residents who aren’t online, they can choose to receive theirs via text messages, fax or their landline telephone number.
When residents sign up to OWL they automatically become members of their local Neighbourhood Watch and can choose to sign up as a member or become a co-ordinator for their street. Watches can manage themselves online and co-ordinators can send messages to each other – either to individual addresses, streets, watches, areas, wards or towns.
There is no cost to sign up – it’s completely free. All personal information will be stored safely in a secure database and will not be shared with any third parties.
Head of Neighbourhood Policing, Chief Superintendent Brandon Williams, said: “OWL enables members of the public and officers to talk directly to each other quickly and efficiently. Everyday our officers are sending messages to residents about local crimes and incidents, appealing for information, providing warnings or offering crime prevention advice. The overwhelming feedback from people who are already on the system is that it helps to keep them informed and make better choices about their security, whether at home or for their business.
“The key factor is that it’s a two-way communication channel so members of the public can also use it to speak to local officers about any issues and provide information. Supported by Neighbourhood Watch and local volunteers across Gwent, everyone is working together to help make Gwent an ever safer place.”
Highlighting the importance of the system, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Ian Johnston, said: “Gwent utilises OWL brilliantly as a whole and we now have a strong and established community online throughout Gwent. The more OWL members we have, the more ears and eyes we have out there in the community which can provide valuable intelligence to help us catch the criminals. It’s a great example of the police working with partners and members of the community to achieve a common goal – to make Gwent a safer place.”
The competition runs from Friday 4th April 2014 until Monday 30th June 2014.
To sign up to OWL, please visit www.owl.co.uk/gwent
