The Taxpayers’ Alliance have an active North East branch that has been nosing around the local police forces to see what they are spending on their in-house comms teams. Follow link.
It looks like Durham, Cleveland and Northumbria all have 4-5 people doing press and publicity at a cost of around £100K per annum per force.
I guess that the Chief Constables want to tell everyone how great their forces are. Maybe they should concentrate on being great rather than saying they are great.
The Gazette headline today was “Ealing Police Station closing shock”. There was perhaps less shock amongst those, including senior councillors on both sides of the political divide and representatives of community groups, who attended the Ealing Community & Police Consultative Group on 24th May, see previous posting. The Borough Commander, Collette Paul, talked about the likely closure of Ealing Police Station in response to questions raised about customer services issues. Although I made notes of the meeting at the time I did not record any adverse comment. My admittedly dim recollection is that the issue was pretty uncontroversial.
If the Gazette and our local Labour MPs want to keep in touch with developments in policing then they might want to turn up to these meetings. In their defence I might have to accept that the meetings are not very well publicized. There is no website for the group itself and nothing on the council’s or the Met’s websites.
Last night we had the 2nd Safer Neighbourhood Team focus meeting. Sgt Elam was there along with a new PCSO, David Williams. Unfortunately he replaces the previous PCSO, bringing the team strength up to one sergeant, one constable and one PCSO, so we are still no nearer to having the team of four we were promised by the Mayor by the end of April (see his press release).
The three Northfield councillors attended, along with four representatives of residents’ associations, David Stokes who leads the council’s envirocrime team for the area, and Fiorella Williams who is one of the council’s park rangers. Also Mark Meluish, the vicar from St Paul’s Church was there.
We are lucky in Northfield that we have the lowest crime rate in the borough. Lowest will never be low enough though!
Graffiti
Four young offenders have been caught with the help of the park rangers. Two of these have been cautioned, one was too young to get a caution even, and all three of these are in the hands of the youth offending team and will be making reparations. One stupid youngster has pleaded not guilty in spite of being caught red handed. The police are preparing an ASBO for this young idiot. One of the youngsters’ rooms had 35 cans of spray paint in it. They have identified 150 tags.
The police are looking at a dispersal order for Boston Manor which will mean that young people cannot congregate after 9pm.
The combination of the police activity and the new graffiti removal contract seem to be working together to relieve this problem.
Motor Vehicle Crime
There has been a focus on education with large sign boards related to satnavs and triangular yellow lamppost signs on areas where people park, especially commuters. Two offenders have also been jailed. Motor vehicle crimes are down from 61 in the second quarter to 35 in the third quarter.
Drugs
There are problems around North and South Road and the path through the cemetery known as Roberts Alley. This feeds into robbery, burglary and motor vehicle crime.
Dangerous Driving
A number of people mentioned people speeding stupidly. Sgt Elam reckoned that this could be sorted out with Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002. All you need to do is phone him with the number plates. He can then issue a warning notice. The next time they come to police attention the police can confiscate the vehicle they are driving. This should be a significant deterrent to these people.
Priorities
We had a conversation about resetting priorities in the light of progress with graffiti. The number one priority should be drug dealing, followed by motor vehicle crime followed by more general criminal damage including graffiti.
We asked the police to support the efforts of the council and the envirocrime team to tackle flytippers of all kinds.
The next meeting is provisionally scheduled for 7.30pm at Northfield Community Centre on 5th December.
Call Sgt Elam on 07879 888989 if you have any local crime issues or if you would like to attend the next focus meeting.
This being councillor downtime, with a blissful let up in the deluge of paper coming through my letterbox, it is an opportunity to catch up with some of the issues on my To Do list.
Back in June your three Northfield councillors did a tour with our excellent Safer Neighbourhood Sergeant (see previous post). As we walked past South Ealing tube he mentioned that one of his issues is cab drivers urinating in the area. Although there is one of those automated public loos opposite the tube station it is very rarely in working order. The real problem though is London Underground. Apparently their rental contract with the minicab company does not allow even fulltime office staff to use the station’s staff loos, let alone the minicab drivers.
This is just wrong. The relevant legislation is the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. Regulation 20, Sanitary conveniences, states: “Suitable and sufficient sanitary conveniences shall be provided at readily accessible places.” LUL may well say that this is the minicab company’s obligation not LUL’s. In that case it should board up these premises as no business could reasonably be expected to fulfil this obligation without access to the station’s loos. LUL cannot have it both ways, ie income from rental but no obligation to provide loos.
There is no reason why the drivers should not be able to use the loos. TfL licences these people and they judge them safe enough to drive young women home late at night. Surely they are safe enough to be able to use the staff loos at tube stations?
The London Mayor can be PC and inclusive when he is making other people jump through hoops but not when it appears that LUL staff are standing in the way of joined up public transport, reducing public nuisance and providing decent working conditions to minicab drivers.
I have written to Tim O’Toole, Managing Director, London Underground Limited, today to get his response to this issue.
On Saturday morning the three Northfield councillors spent a couple of hours with Sgt Elam who leads the Northfield Safer Neighbourhood Team. Sgt Elam is an experienced officer with some history in the area as he used to run the Penny Farthing pub (now the Ealing Park Tavern).
The team’s priorities are:
The team has recently collared their second graffiti vandal so it sounds like they are making progress.
Unfortunately the team are not up to their promised strength. Sgt Elam’s team is short one PCSO. The Mayor promised that these teams would have a sergeant, a PC and 2 PCSOs by the end of April.
There is some talk of locating some of the Safer Neighbourhood Teams at Northfield tube station. The Northfield councillors want the Northfield team visible in the empty office at the front of the station. We will be writing to the Borough Commander, Collette Paul, to urge that this happens.
It goes without saying that the councillors are very supportive of Sgt Elam and his team.
The Evening Standard today produced figures for the detection of rapes. In Ealing only 19.8% of rapists were bought before a court in the last year (April 2005 – March 2006). These are the third worst figures for the 30 London Boroughs included in the figures. London’s overall detection rate is apparently 36%.
These figures were dug out of the Met by Jenny Jones, Green member of the MPA.
The figures are in this spreadsheet: Detection of Rapes 2005-6.xls
I attended the Ealing Community & Police Consultative Group last night. I had not attended before but was keen to hear the Borough Commander, Collette Paul, speak. In her Borough-wide policing report she gave a preview of crime statistics for the Borough for the year just ended.
It was a mixed picture with overall crime increasing fractionally by 1.5%. Some notable successes balanced by new problems.
Down:
Thefts of motor vehicles – down 33.7%
Residential burglary – down 31.7%
Wounding – down 10.6%
Up:
Thefts from motor vehicles – up 19.7%
Pick pocketing – up 68.6%
Snatch thefts – up 130%
Robbery of the person – up 35.5%
It seems that proactive police work and the SmartWater scheme have had an effect on residential burglary. The fall in wounding was put down to partnership working with the licensed trade.
On the negative side it seems that thefts of high value electronic equipment, such as satnavs and portable PCs, as well as cash, have driven the rise of thefts from motor vehicles. Commander Paul recounted one case where the same “customer” had come back three times having left stuff out in his car. A slow learner I think! The Group Chairman, Charles Gallichan, pointed out that some thieves are looking for the ring made by the sucker that holds satnavs in place on windscreens and then breaking in to look under the passenger seat for the kit. Commander Paul said that some thieves have scanners to help them locate hibernating PCs in boots of cars. Turn them off completely. We should be hearing about developments in this area soon. The three categories of robbery (pick pocketing, snatch thefts and robbery of the person) are being driven by three factors: gangs of youths targeting buses, a Hammersmith gang of bike robbers and the sextrade.
Commander Paul presented a slide showing the correlation between crime and crack houses. Five have been closed down recently. There are many more to root out and this will be a big Police priority over the next few months. Commander Paul’s objective is to get rid of them all and then stamp hard on any new ones so that the message goes out that they will not be tolerated in Ealing.
Overall Commander Paul gave the impression of having a grip. She handled the Q & A session well including the grumbling from the floor. A recurrent grumble was poor customer service at Ealing Police Station, something of which I have had experience of myself. She is actively looking at a long term solution to this problem.
Susan Parsonage, Head of the Council’s envirocrime unit, then talked about how the Council is working in concert with the Police and others to tackle environmental crime. It sounds like they have made a good start but that there is a long way to go. She acknowledged the council’s poor performance in enforcing Penalty Charge Notices (see previous posting) but felt that the Council’s performance should be measured in terms of improving peoples’ environments. Success in stopping the street selling of cars in Greenford needs to be repeated in many other places.
On May 16th 2005 Jeshma Riathatha from Greenford was murdered by convicted Latvian rapist Viktors Dembovskis. He was sentenced to a whole life term on March 29th this year. We can only hope that life means life in this terrible case.
Today the Ealing & Acton Gazette features on its front page Tracy Hines who was one of 20 known victims of Saturninin Barwinski, an unemployed Polish addict after the drug rehab course. Attacked and robbed in Greenford last September she is disgusted that his sentence received on 21st April was only three years.
On 29 October 2005 Barwinski committed his final crime. He pulled up alongside an 81-year-old woman in his car and after asking for directions grabbed her holdall and drove away causing her to be dragged along the road a short distance. This happened in Greenford yet again.
Thanks to the Conservative led Public Accounts Committee and Tory back bencher Richard Bacon (see Times today) the incompetence of the Home Office in failing to deport foreign criminals at the end of their sentences has been bought to light. We have to hope that if Dembovskis is ever let out he is deported to Latvia and that once Barwinski has completed his totally inadequate sentence he too is deported to Poland. We have to hope too that the good people of Latvia and Poland have more vigilant interior ministries than we have here in Britain who will protect them adequately from these evil men.
The Home Office presides over a police force that can only nick a violent drug user after 20 goes. The Home Office presides over the Immigration & Nationality Directorate that lets people like Dembovkis and Barwinski in. The Home Office presides over a Prison Service that fails to talk to the IND so that 1,023 people like Dembovkis and Barwinski are roaming free right now.
As a candidate in the local elections next week I should be concentrating on local issues. The Home Office is a local issue in Greenford and Ealing. Nationally and locally government is not performing its first and most important duty, namely to deliver public safety.
We have had a Labour council since 1994, we have had a Labour government since 1997, we have had a Labour London Mayor since 2000. We know who to blame.
Ealing Conservatives issued a press release yesterday confirming that 8 out of 23 Met Safer Neighbourhood Teams will be short staffed. We were promised teams in place by both the Mayor and Commissioner by the end of April but Cleveland, Ealing Common, Elthorne, Hobbayne, North Greenford, Northolt Mandeville, Perivale and Southfield wards will be short of PCSOs. There are only 7 opposition wards out of 23 in Ealing but fully 4 of them are short on their teams. No favouritism then?
The information came from a memo from Chief Super Bloomfield to Richard Barnes our Conservative GLA member for Ealing. This is the same policeman who assured me only a few days ago that there was nothing untoward with removing names of policeman from the SNT part of the Met website.
On Friday 13th April I e-mailed Commander Hitchcock at the Met to complain that the SNT pages of the Met website have been changed to remove all named officers except the sergeants leading teams. I pointed out that this is most unhelpful from an accountability point of view. Up until now ward councillors and candidates have been able to check progress on Safer Neighbourhood Teams by looking at this site. Now their only recourse will be to phone up sergeants to check on progress.
On 10th January both the Mayor and the Commissioner announced that teams of 4 would be in place in all wards by the end of April. Does this change to the Met website mean that they are intent on not allowing us to check on the delivery of this most political of pledges in the run up to the local elections on May 4th?
I asked Commender Hitchcock to put the names back on the site. I got a reply from Chief Superintendent Stephen Bloomfield this Monday, the 24th April. He reassured me that there was nothing untoward in the fact that only the details of the ward team sergeants are shown on the website. He promised that: “the names of all the Safer Neighbourhoods Team officers will be on the website in the near future”. I have written back to Chief Super Bloomfield to suggest that the end of the month would be a suitable timetable for this task given that we were promised SNTs by the end of April by the Mayor and the Commissioner. Let’s see the beef.
The Conservatives in Ealing are right behond these teams. We feel though that it is a tad political to bring them forward very publicly so that their roll out coincides with the local elections and spend £300K of the Met’s money advertising them. Sure enough the Labour Party in Northfield has come out with leaflets saying “Thanks to Labour, Northfield now has its own dedicated Safer Neighbourhood Team”. Well yes, thanks to a Labour Mayor who is charging us all 2.75 more. We really should have a lot of extra police for the extra money we are spending.
Phil Taylor 