On Friday 15th March we welcomed TVP’s Police and Crime commissioner Matthew Barber back to our Drop-in Centre.

To prepare for Matthew’s visit, we wanted to hear young people’s experiences of policing. We ran an anonymous in person and online survey for 2 weeks, asking young people about their experiences of the police and policing. We promoted it to Drop-in Centre, Next Step residents, online and over 2 days at the Bucks Skills Show.

We were surprised that only 10 young people completed the survey. Previous surveys have received between 86 and 290 responses.

In this survey, we asked 5 questions:

  1. Have you ever had any interaction with the police? If yes, could you tell us about it?
  2. How well informed do you feel about your rights when spoken to by the police? (out of 10)
  3. How much do you agree with this statement? I trust the police will protect me. (out of 10)
  4. Would you like to explain more about why you trust the police to protect you? Or won’t?
  5. What could be done to improve young people’s trust in the police locally?

With our youth panel, we mulled over whether the low response rate speaks volumes about how young people feel about the police. Our youth panel shared their thoughts – that young people might not trust the survey was really anonymous, that IP addresses could be traced and information might be added to a police database/file, and that the police might not actually care or act on young people’s thoughts or concerns.

On 15th March, PCC Matthew listened to our small survey responses and spoke directly to five young people, youth worker Tappa and CEO Hannah about knife crime, stop and search, PCSOs and their visibility in the community. Together we explored ways in which Thames Valley Police could build better relationships with Aylesbury Vale’s 13-25 year olds. Matthew has promised to think about what we could do – together.

In the meantime, we look forward to starting our knife crime awareness project mid April.