Money taken from the pockets of drug dealers and organised crooks has been pumped into deprived areas which have been blighted by crime.
Almost £100,000 has been handed out to various community groups in deprived areas, much of it seized via the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA), which allows the courts to order convicted criminals to hand over their illicit profits.
One success story involved Merseyside Police, partnering with St Helens Council, Torus Housing, Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service and the UK Health Security Agency to hold Participatory Budgeting (PB) events in St Helens - where groups make "Dragon's Den" style bids for funding.
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Three events have been held so far in the town, one in Parr dubbed 'Parrticipate' one in Newton called 'Rootin' for Newton' and one in Sutton called 'Summat for Sutton'.
Those have included sports clubs, homelessness charities, youth groups, boxing gyms, domestic violence charities and others. Senior officers believe the events have helped make deprived and struggling communities "less tolerant" of crime and less likely to fall into the grip of serious organised criminals.
At a recent event to promote Merseyside Police's crime prevention strategy, St Helens Community Policing Inspector Stacey Pope, said: "All the decisions and the processes are made by the public, so giving them complete autonomy over how the money should be spent in their community. It benefits the local area and the communities.
"The event is intended to create community resilience and build trust and confidence in the policing partners."
Insp Pope said that the police carry on working with the groups involved in the PB events after the funding has been dished out to keep a close eye on issues including anti-social behaviour and gang activity.
She said: "They feed information, tell us where they want us to police, tell us what the problems are, because you're our eyes and ears out there. You're our intelligence gathering. By these community action groups getting together, they talk through the problems with us and we can target the situations."
The Particpatory Budgeting model has been rolled out to other areas including Speke, Leasowe, Croxteth, Tuebrook, Old Swan, Huyton, Stockbridge Village and Maghull.
Chief Constable Serena Kennedy told the ECHO: "The brilliant bit about that is it's POCA funding that's doing that. There's nothing better than saying to a community that the money we are using has come from serious and organised crime, I love that bit about it. The connections made at these community events are fantastic."
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