Stockwell Park Conservation Area
Co-ordinator: David Tomlinson
Report August 2007
See also the Stockwell Park Neigbourhood Watch main page.
Local Crime
Recent murders have been a sad reflection of the culture of youth gangs and associated drug and violent crime. The Vassall Police Team had already been deeply involved in an operation tackling the gang culture on Myatt’s Field Estate. This included visiting the parents of identified criminal gang members and telling them what their children were getting up to. There was a surprising and gratifying response to many of these calls, with parents apparently unaware of the extent of their own children’s involvement and expressing gratitude for being warned.
In our own area, there has been some increase in burglaries (but some arrests as well), but the main increase is in car crime, both theft from and theft of cars. The Vassall Police have arranged for a decoy car to be deployed locally in the hope of trapping culprits.
Neighbourhood policing structure
The Metropolitan Police's Ward-based Safer Neighbourhoods Police Teams and Neighbourhood Panels have been in place for a year now, and are clearly becoming a focal point for direct contact with local police officers.
Each Ward should have a Police Team of one Sergeant, two Police Constables, and three Police Community Support Officers (who have no rights of arrest etc).
As the Conservation Area is in two wards, Stockwell and Vassall, I belong to both Panels. I am also Secretary of the Vassall Panel.
The Panels are self-supporting - anybody who is interested in attending regularly as an individual, but mainly representatives of local neighbourhoods e.g. Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinators, housing estate Tenant Management Organisations, workers in community projects. They elect a Chair - currently Ian Sweeney, one of our residents, is Chair of the Stockwell Ward Panel, and John Cox, of the Church Manor Estate (Vassall Road) Tenant Management Committee, is Chair of the Vassall Ward Panel.
These Panels meet every two months. The meetings are open to all, and are often attended by a ward Councillor which gives direct access to the Council itself. They are always attended by at least one Council Officer (from the Community Safety function), and usually by more Officers with special functions. For instance, the Lambeth Park Rangers attended the Vassall Ward meeting to discuss problems on Slade Gardens.
I can supply the Minutes of these meetings to anybody interested. They give a good picture of local policing concerns, and we hope to have them available on-line in due course. Both Panels have agreed that drugs, both dealing and use, are their principal policing priorities as they are the source of such a high proportion of our crime and of the anti-social behaviour that is the bane of people’s lives on some estates.
- The development of the Panels is currently the subject of debate. A useful and productive meeting of representatives of most of Lambeth's Panels was held on 6 June, generated by concern at the Council's draft proposals for them. A clear outcome was a general determination to remain independent of both the Police and of 'politicians'. Another was to set up a working party to draw up Terms of Reference for the Panels. Panels will be debating locally in the coming months how far they want their roles to extend, which emphasises the importance of getting as many views as possible through a good attendance at meetings. I have an official Note of the 6 June meeting if anybody would like to a copy.
- Regrettably there is no evidence of senior Police support for neighbourhood policing in Lambeth. Issues raised by Panels with senior officers have been simply ignored, and Vassall Ward’s Police Team has been reduced by one of its two PCs on the grounds that ‘crime has been reduced so not so many officers are needed’. It does not seem to occur to senior officers that the Vassall Team only succeeded in reducing crime levels by having a fully established Team of effective officers.
- Lambeth has had a new Borough Police Commander since 2 July – Chief Superintendent Sharon Rowe. She has assured me that she is supportive of the neighbourhood police team concept from her experience elsewhere in London. I shall be watching closely what happens in practice.
Police Performance
There is considerable concern at some essential aspects of Lambeth Police performance.
Kennington Police Station has a depressingly poor reputation for its counter or ‘front office’ service. Both the Vassall and Stockwell Panels have complained formally to senior officers about long periods when the counter has been unattended – up to 45 minutes with no police officer there. This is not a matter of a queue, but of simply nobody there to deal with the public. Reporting crime becomes a tedious task. The on-line service discontinued, phones often unanswered for lengthy periods, and nobody on our police station’s counter means that crimes are not reported and not dealt with. In these circumstances little credence can be put on the police’s own statistics.
The Panels’ complaints have gone unanswered, and two subsequent follow-ups with the Borough Commander herself have brought no response.
Following my complaint last autumn about the delays in answering 999 calls to the Police that residents told me they were experiencing, and a subsequent Police acknowledgement of their substance with a promised improvement, I have noted a decline in Kennington’s response times to 999 calls.
The Metropolitan Police’s document 'Quality of Service Commitment' says 'Our Promises to You: We aim to get to emergencies within 12 minutes.'
In fact, Kennington only achieves this on 75% of calls. When queried, they claim that this was their target (although it does not appear in the formal documentation supplied by the Borough Commander) and declined to offer any explanation for the discrepancy with the London-wide ‘aim’ (when is an ‘aim’ not a target?). The most disappointing aspect is that Kennington Police’s attitude seems to be that when a target is reached they can relax. There is no concept of ‘continuous improvement’.
Your policing concerns
Please let me know if you have concerns about policing in Lambeth – and indeed any good news about police performance. Our local police teams are energetic and willing. We need to make sure they get the support they deserve, and thus we get the policing we need.