In our ongoing A Day in My Life series, PS Gareth Cross, Ceredigion Neighbourhood Response Sergeant, takes us through what his job entails.

I HAVE worked as a Police Sergeant in Aberystwyth covering the Ceredigion Neighbourhood since 2014.

The response teams are the officers that patrol, attend to calls from the public and investigate all but the most serious crimes or crimes involving vulnerable members of our communities.

As a Response Sergeant my role is to supervise these officers, their investigations and to give supervisory oversight to ongoing incidents that occur across the county.

Aberystwyth and Cardigan are the county’s two 24-hour response hubs and are staffed by officers across five shifts, each shift has their own response Sergeant which means at any one time there are usually two of us covering the county.

We also have five other non-24-hour stations in the county where Police Sergeants, Constables and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) operate from.

My officers and I work between six and seven days in a row covering early morning, afternoon and night shifts. A typical shift starts by arriving approximately 20 minutes before I am due to be on duty. During this time I prepare all of my appointments (handcuffs, baton, incapacitant spray, radio, body-worn video camera, mobile data device and taser) and I have a verbal briefing with the outgoing Response Sergeant.

These briefings tend to set the tone for the shift and they include information on any ongoing incidents, suspects who are in custody or need to be in custody and any other issues for the day; these issues can literally be anything from pastoral issues to equipment and vehicle faults. When you are the Duty Sergeant everything and anything is your responsibility to resolve in the first instance.

Once I have finished my handover, I assemble my team and we have a briefing where we run through incidents from the previous day, any local issues that need attention (actionable intelligence) and other intelligence circulations involving local criminality or neighbourhood issues.

Actionable Intelligence is wide-ranging, from performing bail checks on those granted bail by both the police and the courts to patrols in areas where suspicious activity has been reported by the public.

We really do take on board all information that comes from our neighbourhoods to be able to best focus our Policing presence.

From there I then assign work to my officers; this is largely dependent on what has been handed over to me from the Outgoing Sergeant and based on the calls for service we have had from the public over the day. On average we will have between five and 10 outstanding calls at the beginning of our shifts and 25 to 45 active calls in the Aberystwyth area.

Read the full feature in this week’s Cambrian News, on sale now