Gudbye t'Dave

Dave Charnock, the man behind the excellent drug dealing counter-operation in Kensington last week, has finally left his post in Tuebrook and has moved to South Liverpool on his promotion.

He was a Sergeant when I first met him, but a few years working with us in Kensington and Fairfield has seen him get promoted twice and now he is leaving us as a Chief Inspector. I fully expect a queue of clamouring Sergeants to be begging to come and work with us, if this is the reward they can expect!

Dave, you have been terrific, we Councillors and residents are all very grateful that you listen and you take action when we tell you what our priorities are.

Twice in three years you have run operations to clear the prostitutes from Kensington after we told you how much damage this was causing to community well-being.

When we told you and your team about the anti-social behaviour in Molyneux Road, you agreed that your officers could work on an operation to sort this out, but also agreed to meet with young people and talk to them about their concerns too.

When the community was on its knees over the huge spate of burglaries last year, primarily carried out by one young man on his own, you dedicated every officer you could find to disrupting him and his activities, seeing him locked up several times. And again you met the residents to reassure them that you were taking this seriously.

You have always ensured that we are informed of any unusual criminal activity that has taken place, phoning us to explain the background and the action you are taking.

And if I had any doubt that you were listening and responding to the people's priorities, I only have to look at the massive operation to rid our streets of drug dealers, nearly two years in the making, and I know you had to work hard to raise£200,000 to fund it.

We have always taken you on trust, that you were doing something about drug dealing, even though at times we did despair that the situation was getting worse. We have told residents a hundred times that just because they could not see anything happening, it did not mean that the police were not out there, gathering evidence and surveilling. Given that it was not something you could ever tell us about openly, we had to be satisfied with the odd nod or wink, that you had the situation in hand.

And now we know for certain that you had.

I hope everything goes really well for you in your new posting, you have been a credit to your uniform and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you have done for our residents - and indeed for me personally on the two times I have been a victim of crime in Fairfield myself.

We will miss you terribly but we look forward to working with your replacement, he has a hard act to follow, but we will mould him in our ways!

All the best!