Policing in your neighbourhood

I hope the Talk London Administrator who posted the article on Safer Neighbourhoods programme is reading the comments posted below, he will then realise that the system he has mentioned is obviously not working. Visible Police on a beat was a far more effective method of Policing and worked, Closing so many Police Stations may have saved money, but it has alienated the Police from the Public!

Having had a chance to read some of the comments, many refer to the lack of Police Officers on our streets. The main reason for this will be the 'Hair-brained' scheme of removing most of the Police Stations in London. I hope the Mayor reads some of the comments which have been posted or this is a waste of time. With the sale of so many Police properties, where has all the money gone? Where have all the Police Officers gone? Let the Mayor give us the answers!

Police need to be more visible to the Public they serve, the areas they work are far too big for them to patrol on foot. The removal of most of the Police Stations in London has made it impossible to have a visible presence. We will never get back what we had. I believe that the young men and women in our Police Service are just as dedicated as those in 60's and 70's, however they have not been helped by the errors made by successive governments.

I live in pimlico and do take a zero tolerance to anti social behaviour. I challenge teenagers and adults. I phone 101 and my local Estate anti social officer. You can't change anything by apathy. It's not always easy challenging people. I've had good and bad response's.
What's the worst that can happen? It might just get a whole lot better.

I live in a very poor and deprived area of North London.

We used to have a safer neighbourhood team office on the high street where I live.
This was closed down and the nearest police station is now almost a mile away/20 mins walk - the safer neighbourhood team is now harder to contact and they have to spend more time actually getting to the area they are responsible for.

There is no easy way for us to 'pop in' and talk to them. It almost feels like a kick in the teeth when I visit more affluent areas of London and see that they still have some local safer neighbourhood offices open. The only real option we have is to email them with our concerns which feels very impersonal and means we have no guarantee when we'll get a response.

I haven't seen any officers from my SNT in months- through no fault of their own. They're overstretched and do not have the resources to police the visible policing issues that matter to us residents. I've previously asked them for details on when they'd be out and about in the ward and they declined to reveal that so we have no idea when they're actually out on the ward.

I often find it difficult to get a police response in my local area- again through no fault of their own. They're a busy borough and my 'ward' is at the outer edge of this borough. I believe the police response and resourcing suffers as a result and there simply aren't enough officers for the amount of crime on the borough.

I once called police to report that a man was walking down the high street trying to sell a stolen phone, nobody was able to come and he got away despite being in the area for over 15 minutes and offering me a brand new smartphone for £20.

I called police on another day to report that a man was aggressively begging and harassing women, despite having an ASBO/CBO prohibiting him from doing just that. Nobody came in time and he got away.

A neighbour had a pint glass thrown at him by a drunk football fan, it smashed a window. Nobody came in time despite the man being seen at a pub across the road after the incident.

All these things reduce our confidence in our local police and enbolden criminals to carry on offending as the chances of getting caught are slim.

Another example I'll give you regarding the failure of the SNT model. It sounds good on paper but very often has little impact in practice:

We have ongoing issues with the same prostitutes openly trading on street corners and people kerb crawling. As a group of residents in a new block of flats we've tried to engage with our local officers over the past year by email (as that seems to be the only way to get through to them) and only been met with half hearted promises of work to be done, and offers of face to face meetings with the SNT that never materialised. Some improvements have been made (such as police working with the council to fence off areas used for sex work) and the odd arrest or caution, but we aren't really kept up to date with what is happening and it feels like our concerns are simply a burden on the SNT and local police rather than an issue we can work towards solving with them. We have no visibility on the actual work going on behind the scenes and feel badly informed.

Calls to 101 to report the prostitution simply get filed away with no action being taken- call handlers admitting it simply generates a log but no response as it isn't considered a serious enough of a crime to warrant a response especially when the SNT aren’t working. This despite the effects of prostitution on the local community- women who live in our building being harassed and cat called by punters looking for sex workers, empty condom wrappers and body fluids left strewn across the ground and kerb crawlers outside most nights and the unsavoury characters and additional ASB that organised prostitution brings (including violent and dangerous pimps who circle the area in fancy cars to collect cash and protect their business). Sometimes it feels like it isn't worth bothering- the police called me back one day to tell me that I should call less frequently (as I was calling 101 daily regarding the prostitutes stood outside my home). The caller was sympathetic, but suggested calling once a week with details of when I had observed the prostitutes instead of as it happens as my calls were simply generating additional admin and putting me on a list of ‘frequent callers to police’ that somehow had to be managed.
Reading the local newspapers was even more sobering as it turns out that this area has suffered from prostitution since at least 2013.
Clearly the SNT model isn't working in our area and something has to change. We need more police officers empowered to deal with local issues affecting us, regardless of their severity, rather than efforts to only tackle the headline 'MOPAC 7' crimes or drugs which they seem to be obsessed at reducing to make their statistics look good.

Having a dedicated SNT for each ward seems like a great idea, until you realise that certain wards in London have much higher crime rates than others which need more resources to tackle. We can't use the same blueprint for local policing in a leafy, well to do area and a deprived, crime ridden area.

Bottom line is- we need to adequately staff and resource SNTs depending on the local demand, even if it means some areas require more resources than others.
We need to make sure officers are given bases to work from in the area they police, and empower them to effectively deal with crime that is affecting and important to LOCAL people, even if it isn't a headline/serious crime.
We need to ringfence these officers from being pulled into other work so that they can focus on tackling issues on their wards.
We also need to make SNTs accountable to the communities they police- agree timelines and deliverables with the local community and assess the progress that has been made in line with them, as it often takes months/years to get any meaningful progress in our situation as it stands.

Sorry for the long rant- just wanted to get some thoughts and ideas off my chest.

While I believe most Police officers are great, the system stops them from doing their best. I'd really like to see Police actively deal with anti-social behaviour: the "small" things that they now wouldn't even bother looking at. If having to stop and fine someone for anti-social behaviour means spending 5 hours filling in forms and reports, then Police won't do it. Give them body cams (already proven to change people's behaviour for the better when interacting with Police) and simplify their work.

Make tackling low-level crime and anti-social behaviour a priority. Take an example from how NY dealt with and reduced their crime rates. If you teach people they can get away with the small things, they'll soon think they can get away with anything.

We need more of a zero-tolerance approach - just my 2 cents,