Coffee with a cop in Dundee aims to brew community spirit with police

By Kenny MacDonald, Evening Telegraph
Original article HERE

Linzi McAlpine and Ashley Thom, of the city centre community team.A scheme has been brewing in Dundee’s city centre to serve up stronger community links – and three community officers visited Coffee and Co to put Coffee-with-a-Cop into action.

Linzi McAlpine and Ashley Thom, of the city centre community team, dropped in along with Sergeant Martin Jenkins as part of the new scheme to chat with customers and discover any issues they wanted to raise.

Ashley said: “Other teams are out in Dundee in places such as Lochee and Fintry and basically Coffee-with-a-Cop is to make us more accessible to the people and more approachable. Sometimes people just want a blether which is great too.”

Linzi added: “There are issues which people can raise and we take leaflets along such as the Ditch the Dealer one, which has useful numbers for the public to contact us on and other services.

“There are things like anti-social behaviour and fly-tipping and people can report information to us anonymously.

“We have been to various places every couple of months, from McDonald’s to Starbucks, and we have partnered up with loads of businesses who are keen for us to come in and meet the public.

“We also advertise our dates on Facebook.”