ER NHW applied for match funding from the three East Renfrewshire Area Forums in order to purchase Alcohol Testing Kits for our police officers.

In addition we also received funding for the purchase of personal attack alarms.

On Friday 11th June 2010 these items were handed over to Inspector Campbell Crawford, the Deputy Area Commander for East Renfrewshire.

Councillor Ralph Robertson who was chair of one of the area forums when the awards were made said "When I was chair of the Area Forum I was pleased that an award was made to Neighbourhood Watch to purchase strips to test for detecting alcohol.

Neighbourhood watch requested these so that they could work with the police in reducing the amount of underage drinking in the area.

The strips will be used by our Local police officers to test for alcohol and will help remove drink from the streets.

This will help reduce some of the unwanted anti social behaviour."

These strips permit police officers to check that the liquid being carried in bottles is in fact as described by the carriers, innocent juice.

A recent wide spread trend in East Renfrewshire has been for youngsters to decant spirits into 2 or 3 ltr plastic bottles originally containing drinks such as Coke or Irn Bru.

Carrying openly marked alcohol containers was too easy for the police to spot.

Decanting spirits such as Vodka into a coke bottle and mixing it with the Coke was thought to throw the police off the fact that they were carrying alcohol.

Without access to testing facilities police officers were unable to confirm that the bottles only contained Coke.

With the use of these strips the police officers can very quickly ascertain if indeed there is any alcohol in the bottles and deal with the persons concerned.

A very worth while addition to the tool kits of police officers based in East Renfrewshire, and will be invaluable to assist in preventing of Anti Social Behaviour and Violence committed under the influence of alcohol.

Personal attack alarms have been provided by ER NHW to vulnerable people located throughout East Renfrewshire over the past months, in addition we have now provided 50 units to the police in order that when they encounter a vulnerable person they are also in a position to offer a free alarm