Its been a busy shift for your local Rurals Policing Team with a lot of our focus been supporting the NEC and its surrounding area during the week of CRUFTS, we’re happy to report there were no major incidents and the event went really well with the amazing demonstration of our Police Dogs being reported as one of the highlights.  Everyone including our dogs had a fantastic time and we’re very much looking forward to attending again at CRUFTS ’26.

We’ve received a report of an attempt distraction burglary in Bentley Heath with a male attempting to gain access to properties by claiming to be from the water board, thankfully he was unsuccessful in his attempt however we’d like to advise that should you be greeted by someone claiming to be from a utility company they will often wear company branded clothing and be carrying some form of photo identification stating their name and the company they work for, if you are not convinced of who they say they are or the validity of the reason they are there then the safest option is to refuse entry and call us on 999.

As you may or may not be aware we run police beat surgeries in Meriden and Balsall Common once a month to give members of the public the opportunity to sit down with an officer to discuss any concerns regarding crime or ask for advice in crime prevention, whilst these have been very successful and welcomed within the community we’ve received feedback that more people would like to attend however are unable to due to commitments during the day, as such we are investigating other venues and opportunities with a look to host Bear Surgeries on the evenings as well.  We will update you further with more information both on social media and in an upcoming WMNOW as soon as those dates become available.

Finally, we’d also like to bring to your attention our new CCTV database that we’re building to help us identify sources of CCTV that may cover crimes and incidents in and around your area.  It takes just 60 seconds to register and it’s completely secure and confidential and can help fight real crime.  If you’d like to know more about how the service works and/or register then visit westmidlands.police.uk/cctv-registry to learn more.