Category: Community

Farm Thefts

Overnight Friday 6th February – Saturday 7th February  a farmyard at Hargrove, Shaftesbury has been entered. A wheeled pressure washer has been stolen.

Tarrant Valley – Burglaries

Dorset Police have had 2 daytime burglaries reported in the last 2 days in the Tarrant Valley.

On Thursday 5th February, a property was broken into in Tarrant Hinton. The offender(s) gained entry by smashing a rear window and an untidy search of the property was made and items taken.

On Friday 6th February, in the morning, a property was broken into in Tarrant Gunville. Offender(s) gained entry by forcing open a ground floor window and once inside, an untidy search of the property has been made and items taken.

If anyone saw or heard anyone/thing suspicious in the vacinity of these villages, on these days, please call Dorset Police on 101, quoting crime number 5201 for the Tarrant Hinton burglary and 5323 for the Tarrant Gunville burglary.

Blandford Rural SNT would like to take this opportunity to remind all residents to be vigilant and keep their properties secure.  There is no such thing as ‘I’m only popping out, it will be ok if I leave the back door unlocked’. Keep yourself and your property safe and secure.  If anyone would like to have a free Crime Prevention Survey of their property, completed by their local SNT, please call 101 and ask to speak to a member of the team.

Please see below messages received from Action Fraud –

Pension Changes 2015

HMRC have advised that from April 2015, people over the age of 55 will be given the flexibility of taking a number of smaller lump sum pension pots. 25% of the sum will be tax-free, with the remaining pension fund charged at marginal rate of income tax.

If you take out money from your pension fund before the age of 55, the normal tax rules apply.  We are concerned that fraudsters will take advantage of these rule changes by offering to invest pensions on the victim’s behalf.  Be very wary of such offers.

Avoid losing your hard-earned cash:

• Do not invest with companies which cold call you, offering extremely high returns. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• Seek financial advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau, who work alongside the Treasury delivering the ‘Pension Wise’ service.
• If you wish to invest your savings in a company, please ensure you seek advice from an FCA registered and authorised advisor
• Be aware of callers offering a free pension review service by phone call, email and text message and do not invest in unregulated markets such as overseas property developments, storage units or forestry

We are holding a parcel in your name” – scam postcards delivered to resident’s homes

Scam postcards are being delivered to UK residents’ homes claiming that a parcel containing “jewellery” is waiting for the homeowner.

Find out how to avoid becoming a victim of this type of fraud by visiting the website below-

http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/alert-we-are-holding-a-parcel-in-your-name-scam-postcards-delivered-to-residents-homes-feb15

Dear Resident

This Thursday from 10am you can see democracy in action as I present my proposal to freeze the cost of the policing element of the council tax to the Police and Crime Panel.  The meeting will be webcast and I would like to invite you to join us online for the meeting at http://webcasting.dorsetforyou.com/core/portal/home

My decision to freeze the precept has not been taken lightly. I have sought to balance the needs of our police service with the demands on residents across Dorset. The government have offered me £574,000 if I decide to freeze for this financial year. My preference, naturally, is that wherever possible, I would prefer the government to fund local policing rather than the people of Dorset having to bridge the funding gap in these difficult financial times.

A seven week public consultation has been running on the 2015/2016 precept proposals, which closed last week. Of the respondents, 29% have indicated that they support a freeze. 15% would support a 1% increase although this can be achieved by accepting the Freeze Grant at no cost to the council tax payer. The full results, which can be viewed on our website, will be presented to the Police and Crime Panel on Thursday.

I do hope you are able to join us online for this important event. If you’re a twitter user, we will also be posting updates from the Council chamber via our @PCCDorset twitter account and you can join in the conversation via the hashtag #dpcp2015

Kind regards

Martyn Underhill
​Dorset Police & Crime Commissioner

There have been 2 thefts of large farm equipment from farms in the Sturminster Newton area reported over the weekend.

Overnight on Friday the 23rd January a Lemken 4 furrow plough and a Chilton MX Mudgrabber were stolen from a farmyard in Fifehead St Quintin.

It was reported on Monday 26th January that several pieces of agricultural equipment had also been taken from a farm in the Stalbridge area. These items included an International tractor, a 12 foot long trailer, a pallet pump trolley, a red dung grabber, a yellow bell spike and a quantity of chairs.

If anybody has any information regarding these thefts then please contact Dorset Police on 101.

Thank You

Please see below a message received from Dorset Police on behalf of Action Fraud –

Fraudsters regularly hack into personal online accounts to obtain details which will allow them to defraud you. To prevent fraudsters, it’s very important to use strong passwords when setting up and accessing online accounts and online banking.

Passwords should be memorable enough not to have to write them down and long enough to be unique and hard to guess, which will ensure they are less vulnerable to being stolen. If it is not possible to remember passwords a password manager could be used to store them securely.

Protect yourself:

• Make sure passwords are memorable so that you don’t have to write them down. Make sure they are unique.

• Th!nk ab0ut how you could change the l3tters in your n0rmal passw0rds to make them more difficult to gue55!

• Use long, non-dictionary words and use different ones for each of your personal accounts and online banking. Make sure you change them regularly.

• Make sure passwords are not stored on devices that have shared access by other people, for example in internet cafes and when using other public Wi-Fi.

If you believe you have become a victim of account hacking, change your passwords immediately and report to Action Fraud: www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud

We are the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and financially motivated cyber crime and are run by the City of London Police, working alongside the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Our specialist team uses information from all of the fraud and cyber crime cases reported to us to create alerts about new types of crime or those which are increasing in severity.

Further to the message you received on the 19th December from the Neighbourhood Alerts team, we are delighted to now be working together with this network because it means that we can share our prevention alerts with you from now on. Don’t worry – we will send only a reasonable amount of these alerts to you, and only when we think that they may be relevant, in the hope that you will be able to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of this type of crime.

Issues that we commonly see, and that we will be informing you about specifically over the coming weeks and months include the following:

• People who call to tell you that there is a problem with your bank card and that they need to collect it from you to fix the problem;
• Fraud committed by people selling event / entertainment tickets, weight-loss / teeth whitening drugs, or vehicles online;
• Fraud committed by people who cold-call thousands of people in the UK in order to sell them an investment in shares or precious metals, or who want them to invest their pension;
• People pretending to be someone they are not in order to persuade your business to send money to a new bank account to pay for an invoice;
• The activities of cyber-criminals who want to infect your computer or smartphone in order to steal your banking details or “lock” important files to prevent you from using or viewing them;
• Fraudsters who persuade people to pay a fee in advance of receiving a loan, which never appears.

All of these can be avoided by following the simple prevention advice we will include in every alert we send you, which you will also be able to find on the Action Fraud website

We hope that you find our alerts interesting and that they can help you to keep the criminals at arm’s length.

You will also continue to receive messages as normal from the agencies who already communicate with you.

Thanks for your attention,

The Action Fraud team

If you believe you have been a victim of fraud or cybercrime, please report it to Action Fraud by calling 0300 123 2040, or visiting www.actionfraud.police.uk.

The North Dorset Horsewatch Team are hoping to hold an annual meeting on February 10th at approx 7pm. We hope to use this opportunity to let you know about issues related to equine problems in the area and to gain your feedback as to how we can help you keep safe.
We also expect to hold a first aid demonstration around injuries likely to occur when out riding.

Unfortunately at this time, we have no funding and require £40 for the payment on the room.

We can offer advertising in our newsletter which will be sent out to all registered Horsewatch members at the end of this month.

If you are able to assist could you please contact myself, Kate Hann 6268 Shaftesbury or emma@roblestud.com