During January there were:
- 2 Friday night patrols and 3 Saturday night patrols
- 5 Patrols totalling 25 hours of cover involving 16 Street Pastors
- 1 pair of flip-flops given and 7 bottles of water
- 240 lollies and Love Hearts
Here are some of the ways Street Pastors cared, listened and helped in January:
- Helped bring calm to a group of teens after a party had got out of hand
- Several instances of calming down men that were spoiling for a fight
As expected, January was a fairly quiet month for our Street Pastors with many people waiting for pay-day at the end of January before venturing for a night out in Wantage or Grove.
Several of our teams were involved in calming aggressive situations between young men. On one occasion it was necessary to call the police in order to prevent further escalation of the situation and possible injury.
On hearing that a teens’ birthday party had been closed down after it got out of hand, we headed over to the venue and handed out lollies to the 80-ish young people that were waiting in the car park and chatted with them. Gradually parents started to arrive to collect their children and we stayed there until everyone had been collected or were on their way home on foot.
We see all manner of strange things going on in the early hours and in January we met a small group of guys that had a toilet seat with them and invited us to “gurn” by putting our head through the toilet seat and pulling a silly face! Not sure we’re good enough to enter the Gurning World Championship in September but who knows – with a little more practice…!
If you’ve met a Street Pastor recently you may know that we’ve not had Vimto lollies for some time. The good news is that we have a new supplier and the firm favourite will be back on the streets in the near future!