Michael Josem, running to become an MHK for Douglas East, thinks that all candidates should receive awareness training from the police to enable them to spot and assist victims of domestic violence while they are out canvassing their constituencies.

The former Lib Vannin chair had contacted Chief Constable Gary Roberts to arrange this training for himself, referring to the success of the police Supermarket Safe Spaces programme, which partnered with Shoprite to provide this to its employees.

Mr Roberts said he thought this would be a good idea, and invited Mr Josem to a meeting.

Mr Josem put the idea forward to the Chief Constable that it should be given to all candidates.

He added that he understood Mr Roberts now has a standing offer for any other candidates who wanted to receive the awareness training to get in touch.

Among other things discussed in the meeting were the contents of the Chief Constable’s report, which was released earlier this week and showed a rise in reported crime amidst the pandemic.

Another issue that came up was despite there not being too many issues with initial police recruitment, that there were problems with officer retention.

The former Lib Vannin chair also weighed in on the nature of crime in his constituency, describing how the report showed Douglas east to be ’a bit of a crime hotspot per capita’.

He described this as a ’statistical oddity’ because the area features such a large proportion of the island’s pubs, rather than being representative of an endemic issue of crime within the resident population.

Another Douglas East issue he referred to was the issue of more children becoming involved in the drug trade - pointing out that (across the island) 28 people under 18 had been arrested this past year, compared to just one in past years. A proportion of which would have been in his constituency, he said.

As a suggestion to fight this, Mr Josem suggested: ’We ease the squeeze on the cost of living so we don’t have those [household] disparities in income, and we need to be sure that children have happy, healthy and safe outlets during the week.

’That is these institutions - being able to go play sports at sports clubs, or go to the Scouts, or the Army Cadets, or Beach Buddies.’

Coincidentally, when Mr Josem stopped by police headquarters he encountered a friend who was dropping off drugs paraphernalia which he found in the area of Summerhill Glen, Onchan.

It was a set of scales and a number of very small plastic pouches (of the type used to contain drugs).

The friend expressed their disappointment at the fact that police asked them to drop it off themselves, rather than sending someone to pick it up and check around the area.