Full-time Community Policing Unit to open in Mayo this spring

Anton McNulty

A new full-time, dedicated Community Policing Unit will dramatically reduce crime in the county. That is the view of Chief Supt Pat Diskin, who last Friday told members of the Mayo Joint Policing Committee that he expects the unit to be in place early in the New Year.
“Going forward I will be setting up a full-time dedicated Community Policing Unit. We will have guards in every district in Mayo in a full-time job in community policing. We will advertising for those vacancies and hope to have the recruitment completed by February and that will bring huge value to the local community,” he told the committee.
Chief Supt Diskin added that a form of community policing had been in operation on a part-time basis in Castlebar in recent months, and that the initiative had been doing ‘phenomenal work in the community’. He said the resources are now in place to appoint a full-time unit.
“We have other guards who are not full-time dedicated, but community policing is what they do a lot of the time. I am convinced when we appoint those guards full-time it will bring phenomenal results in every aspects of policing.
“I would have loved to have done it a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have the resources. The resources are [now] being made available to me, and now that I have that, I can move ahead and advertise [for recruits],” he said.