The Failsworth community street patrollers aiming to keep burglars at bay

Volunteers in Failsworth have banded together to try and deter crime in the area.

The idea came about after a spate of break-ins and burglaries in the area through lockdown.

Paul, who set up the Failsworth Street Patrol, said he was seeing Facebook posts in community groups around once a day reporting crimes in the area.

He said: "Failsworth was getting hit quite hard so I just put a post out there asking what people's thoughts would be about setting up a little street patrol.

"The response I got from it was over 300 comments and 6,000 likes so I thought well, why not just go and just do it?

"So one night I just went out on my own with my dog, took a couple of pictures and it's just snowballed from there."

Within one week they had 15 volunteers and they've now got the backing of most of the community. 

He says they're only there to try to deter people from committing the crimes rather than enforcing any laws.

Paul added: "We're not vigilantes, we're a bunch of volunteers who just want to make the community a lot better for everybody.

"All we're actually doing is stopping burglaries.

"We're not a police force, we're not the council or anything like that.

"When we see something, our actions are to sound the horn, flash the lights and we always go in twos so the other person rings the police telling them the address and that we need an immediate response. 

"We keep well away from any incident, we don't get involved in anything. We want people to be able to sleep at night and we're achieving that goal.

"The community's support is so unbelievable and that's what spurring us on to get even more ideas. 

"We just make as much noise as we can. The whole community is backing us.

"They know exactly what we do and it's just to make people aware of us and that we're about and on the street.

"Obviously with there be no crime, car insurance will go down and house prices will go up."

Paul reckons they've already prevented a few crimes.

He went on: "I know for a fact that we've deterred two just because of the way people act when they see us.

"A prime example is the other night, we saw a guy last night a young lad with his hood up and acting really suspiciously.

"He clocked us, he was on his phone.

"We followed at a safe distance just to observe and we noticed he kept looking back and then he ran into a side street so we quickly moved up a little bit forward, he then bombarded across the road.

"To me, if he was doing that he's up to no good - especially at four o'clock in the morning - what's he doing out on the streets acting suspiciously like that?

"The police are so in demand at the moment.

"We're not taking anything away from them. It's just a case of us being a community based street patrol, just getting out there and doing things.

"Over the past week we've definitely seen a reduction.

"On the Failsworth groups we were seeing crimes reported every day, but we've not seen one since."

Paul said that lots of people are getting in touch to say that they're sleeping much easier at night knowing that they're out.

He added: "It's putting the community at ease.

"We have high vis vests on that say Failsworth patrol on and go around with torches so people out who are working earlier, driving past us at three o'clock in the morning like the milkman, and they'll say well done lads, keep up the good work."

They've now started a Go Fund Me page to raise money to not only help to pay for the fuel and they equipment, but also to try and establish themselves as a charity.

"Once we've got £5,000 in the bank we can then register as a charity which then opens a lot of doors for us to actually raise more money for the community as well," added Paul.

He hopes it's a strategy that's adopted by other communities - he's already been approached by other areas wanting help to set up their own patrol:

"Hopefully what we're doing is spreading the word and it's making everybody feel at ease and safe," said Paul.

You can keep up-to-date with the latest from the group on their Facebook page.

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