HSS Isle of Wight have got behind a recent project to engage local youths in building an electric ‘cop car’, which will go against 9 other builds from against Hampshire at an event at Goodwood tomorrow (Sunday).
The project, lead by Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Hayes, has been designed as a way to proactively and positively engage with young people who have previously been involved with low level criminality and antisocial behaviour.
Simon Hayes funded a pilot scheme which was run in the Eastleigh district in April 2015 and ran throughout the summer months. 5 young people were selected (out of 26 referrals from education) to take part in the scheme and over a period of 12 weeks they built and tested an electric kit car that had been purchased through the Greenpower Education Trust. Once the car was built it was used by the young people, in conjunction with the local policing team and the Volunteer Police Cadets, as a method of community engagement.
As a result of the success of the pilot scheme, Hayes (pictured right) agreed to purchase a further 8 cars and in November 2015 young people across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight were selected through partnership referrals to participate in the first phase roll out of the scheme.
During the build phase of the scheme, it is expected that the young people will receive inputs relating to their previous offending behaviour; for example a talk from the community safety partnership about the effect of ASB.
An event, to be held tomorrow (Sunday) at Goodwood, will mark the end of their build phase and will see the 10 cars from Hampshire Constabulary race against each other. Other teams have also been invited to attend the event to make it as fun as possible.
Following the event the cars can be entered into other races across the country, hosted by Greenpower Education trust. It is also hoped that each team will engage with their local community and give the young people an opportunity to talk to people about ‘their car’ and why they were involved in the project.
The cars are designed to be dismantled and re-built and so it is expected that the cars will go through at least 2 cycles of building per year allowing the constabulary to engage with up to 200 difficult to reach young people each year.
