• Reference: 2020/2925
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

I note the growing proliferation of so-called ‘Street Teams’ which now patrol swathes of London’s West End, clad in combat boots and stab vests. These individuals talk to shop owners and members of the public and are clearly carrying out the local intelligence-gathering role that used to be part of policing in London. I take it that their presence on our streets is yet another indicator of the decision by the Metropolitan Police to abandon Sir Robert Peel’s Principles of Law Enforcement. Is this the future of policing in London?

• Reference: 2020/2924
• Question by: David Kurten
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

Given the paucity of commercial advertising currently available to TfL to entertain London’s commuters on the tube, I welcome the return of ‘Poems on the Underground’. However, the current offerings available read like the maunderings of the disturbed. Whilst I am well aware that there are some in our city who are not keen on British culture, the English language has always offered a rich poetic tradition. Is it possible that those involved in this initiative could be persuaded to provide Londoners with something slightly more uplifting in these difficult times?

• Reference: 2020/2923
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

The British police have serious institutional problems. Thanks to financial pressure and legal changes, they over-police low-level offending and under-police serious crime. The regular stream of videos showing police officers being abused by bystanders, while trying to arrest a suspect is a depressing sign of the times. I can’t help but feel the police themselves are partly responsible. In going woke, they have forfeited authority and respect. What changes are the Metropolitan Police going to institute to correct this error?

• Reference: 2020/2922
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

On 1 August 2020, the ‘Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March’ took place in Brixton, with individuals parading in the streets in black uniforms and stab vests. As you will be aware, the Public Order Act 1936 prohibits the wearing of paramilitary and political uniforms in this country. I am assuming that the senior Metropolitan Police officer in charge that day was also aware of this law. However, I feel that once again the police are sending out the signal that laws will be enforced differently for individual communities in London. This policy has profound implications for the future of policing...

• Reference: 2020/2921
• Question by: David Kurten
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

On 22 July 2020, you appeared before Parliament’s Transport Select Committee and told them: ‘Unlike du ring the previous administration where the number of people earning over £100,000 was going up and bonuses were going up, in the last four years they have been going down.’ However, for the end of the financial year 2015/16, when you took over as London’s Mayor, the total number of TfL employees earning more than £100,000 was 458 - including Crossrail staff. That went up for the next two years - to a high of 617. It then dropped to 515, before rising again...

• Reference: 2020/2920
• Question by: David Kurten
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

It is an offence not to produce your driving licence, certificate of insurance and MOT certificate when requested to do so by a police officer. However the usual procedure is that the police officer will issue a HO/RT1/ (called a 'producer'), requiring the driver of a vehicle to produce the documents at a police station of their choice within seven days. How many ‘producers’ have been handed out to drivers by the Metropolitan Police’s Traffic Command over the last five calendar years?

• Reference: 2020/2919
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

I note press reports that Metropolitan Police officers executed a vehicle stop on Saturday 4 July in Lanhill Road, London W9. Team GB athlete Bianca Williams and her partner, the Portuguese sprinter Ricardo dos Santos were driving a Mercedes which was being driven on the wrong side of the road, at speed. Former Olympic athlete Linford Christie would subsequently accuse the Metropolitan Police of ‘institutionalised racism.’ Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick would tell the Home Affairs Select Committee that a senior officer representing the police had apologised to Williams for the distress the incident had caused her and said the...

• Reference: 2020/2918
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

My Local Bobby (MLB) is a private company that puts former police officers on uniformed patrol in London. It charges as little at £50 a month per resident to dedicate an officer to local ‘microbeats’ (about three square miles) in London and stations officers from central London shopping locations to Woodford Green (where 139 residents pay to have their ‘bobby’, keep an eye out for crime). Employees are equipped with handcuffs, a body cam, a first aid kit and are trained to make citizens’ arrests. MLB is now pursuing private prosecutions of shoplifters, which the Metropolitan Police has apparently abandoned...

• Reference: 2020/2917
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

To ask the Mayor how many people have been arrested and charged for shoplifting in the Metropolitan Police District over the last five calendar years.

• Reference: 2020/2916
• Question by: Peter Whittle
• Meeting date: 17 September 2020

I note Haringey Borough Council are setting in hand the removal of the name of Rhodes from Rhodes Avenue Primary School - even though it was named after the philanthropist Thomas Rhodes, the great-uncle of Cecil Rhodes, the person who donated the land for the school, which today would cost tens of millions, who had no historical links to colonialism. Is this development a harbinger of the kind of decision-making we can expect from your Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm?