POLICE in Flintshire North are to reach out to the district's Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities in a bid to build trust and ensure all residents feel integrated.

The Leader has reported previously on the Flintshire North police team's "grab-a-gripe" days.

During these days, officers speak ask residents and shoppers for their top three concerns or gripes - whether they are police and crime related or not.

The team then acts as the 'managing body' to take action or refer it to the relevant authority, for example Flintshire Council.

Inspector Stephen Roberts said: "Grab-a-gripe gives me a mandate from each of the sub-districts and we want to engage more with our BAME and minority communities because we don't have their mandate. "This is designed over a number of weeks to speak to as many of those members of our community as we can to better understand their concerns and gripes.

"It is to build trust and allow us to work towards making them feel more integrated.

"We're also working with the college and the schools so they can assist us in driving home the message of equality and diversity, and the message against hate crime.

"We will also identify leaders or spokespeople from all of the communities and in future we will look to hold open day events for those leaders to get to know the police better. "Their views are as important to us as everyone else and it may be that they feel vulnerable because of something we are not aware of.

"Once we understand the concerns of those communities we will set up meetings with the community leaders or set up forums and bring in our local authority partners to see how we can problem-solve these issues."