We go to the bottom of the village [the park] and the officer rolls down the window from the road and we can hear the sound of young people messing about in the park below. There are 5 young lads and 3 girls. I know most of them from undertaking fieldwork at the youth club. The officer gets them to gather round him e in a kind of story telling kind of way e and focuses on a young lad. He asks them if any of them know why he might be there … the story then emerges, that a lad of 14/15 had come down to the park and thrown sand at one of the girls. The boys had taken this badly and decided to chase the lad, running up past the house that the holidaymakers were in. They heard the commotion and came out and instead of continuing to chase the older lad the young people started shouting abuse at the holidaymakers instead. The officer listens intently and then says ‘phone me if you have problems with other people e do not take the law into your own hands’. As we walk back up to the car I am thinking about the consequence of what the officer calls his ‘fatherly advice’. We go back to the holidaymakers and the officer tells the couple he has spoken to the young people and if there are any more problems to phone him on his mobile. They feel like they are getting personalised policing service while the young people are ‘nudged’ into behaving. The officer explains: ‘if they [the other young people] see me speaking to a young lad in a mature manner and respecting him and him respecting me, then I can gain the respect of the group and not deal with it in a criminal manner.’