Safer Neighbourhood Board - Wednesday 7 October 2026, 6:30pm

Safer Neighbourhood Board
Wednesday, 7th October 2026 at 6:30pm

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Good evening everyone and welcome. My name is Charles Hight. I'm the chair of the Wandsworth

Safer Neighbourhood Board and it's a real privilege to chair the board and to work with

fellow residents across the borough, the ward panels, the police, the council and our community

partners. Thank you for all coming to the Tyana Hall this evening and also those of

you that are online joining via the webcast. Is the sound okay? I'm very conscious of the

poor weather and the loads of rain outside today so I'm especially grateful for those

in the room. I'd like to welcome Councillor Caroline de Saussure, Cabinet Member for Enforcement,

together with local councillors, along with our ward panel chairs and members, independent

stop and search and custody visiting representatives, as well as the Met Police colleagues, Council

Community Safety team, community groups and volunteers, but most importantly, a very warm

welcome to residents from across the borough. This is your meeting. It comes at an important

time for neighbourhood policing and community safety, this public meeting. The Council has

recently set out proposals, which, subject to approval, would fund 25 dedicated metropolitan

police officers and create a new integrated enforcement team for the borough, with stronger

a focus on visible neighbourhood policing

and coordinated enforcement.

I won't go into the detail now,

as the cabinet member would like to say more

about the proposals shortly, and the thinking behind them,

but they highlight the benefits of tonight's discussion,

particularly timely.

And very recently, the commissioner also commissioned

a change in the Met's approach to public order policing,

intended to reduce abstractions from neighbourhood teams,

an issue that's affected us all across our wards.

There are also other changes

that affect community safety, et cetera,

including the early release scheme

that sort of come with HM Prison Wandsworth.

So policing is changing,

crime and community safety is changing,

but I think the police are putting in a load

of proactive efforts, lots of operations,

and I think we should welcome and celebrate

those successes that they've achieved to date tonight.

So I don't want to steal the superintendent's thunder,

but I'm pleased to hear that there's recent successes

in Tooting and Putney across the borough

that I'm sure he'll come into.

Thank you.

But before we come on, just a couple of practical points.

If you write your name on the sign -in sheet

just outside the door, please be aware

that your name will appear on the printed minutes.

If you don't wish your name to appear,

please just sign in and put a line through your name.

Is that correct?

Thank you.

And also, if you're speaking and presenting a question,

please sit very close to the microphone.

Lots of us like to sit back in the chairs and the microphones don't pick up our voice.

So if we're able to do that. And then the last real point from me is we're piloting a new approach tonight.

Many residents have always sort of said to me and others that there's too much time spent going through data packs and slides than the presentation.

and they would welcome more time for questions and answers to the people behind the dais.

So we've included the data pack in its normal form as an appendices,

but we won't be walking through it tonight,

but if you have any questions for officers, I'm sure they'd be willing to help.

This isn't about sharing less information, but it's just about saving time.

So, before we begin, can I ask Ms Burke, do we have any apologies for absence, please?

There are apologies from Councillor Craig, Fred Armare, Jerome Prosser, Martha Vaughan and Carla Montaro.

Thank you. And with that, I'd like to invite Councillor Caroline de Soule,

Cabinet Member for Enforcement, to make her opening remarks.

Great, thank you very much, Chair.

And my apologies in advance, I do need to leave

in half an hour, so I'm sorry about that,

a diary clash.

I'm actually really excited to be talking to you tonight

about our ambitious plans that we've set out

in recent weeks about investing in community safety

and neighbourhood enforcement across the borough.

I think it's one of the most ambitious plans

in Barra's history, one of the most ambitious plans

across the whole of London.

And if the papers were published last week,

if you haven't seen them and want to see them,

they are available online.

If you can't find them online, let me know, drop me a line,

and I'll make sure that you get the paper.

But the headlines are that we are investing

in 25 new police officers.

These will be Wandsworth police officers.

They will be based here in Eton Hall.

there's 25, includes 22 PCs and three police sergeants.

And so we're very excited about that.

We're due to sign the contract next week, I believe.

And then we're hoping that we start seeing boots

on the ground early next year.

The second part of our plans for the borough

is to invest in what we call an integrated enforcement team.

So it's an IET, and you'll be hearing more of that

in the coming meetings.

And the aim behind that is to create

a more coordinated response across the council

in terms of enforcement.

The problem we're trying to solve is that right now

let's face siloed across the council

and this is about bringing all of this together

under the same umbrella.

And hopefully what that means is that as you as residents,

A, you will see more officers on the ground,

B, you will see more proactive action from the council

and better collaboration across various teams and partners.

So that's the headlines.

I don't know what the format is.

Do we want to take a few questions,

or what is the format, Mr. Chair?

If anyone has any immediate questions, please go.

Thank you, Chair.

This is brilliant, and I think the coordination

and working with our people is really...

I think this is brilliant,

and I welcome this fantastic initiative

that the council has taken,

because I really do believe that we can work hard

with the Metropolitan Police and our local police service.

In a practical term,

what kind of uniform are they going to have?

So that the people, you know, our residents can,

has it all been designed yet or?

That's a very practical question.

I mean, there will be Met police officers,

so they'll have standard met uniforms.

But the IET team will then have,

will all be, this is all about visibility, right?

So the IET team will all be branded Wandsworth

and will be very clearly visible on the street.

Any more?

Sorry, I've just joined, so forgive me if I missed anything,

but is there gonna be a Q &A on particular initiatives

or is this the time to ask the police officers what's happening with certain things now?

Forgive me, I'm just...

The detail of the police update is going to come shortly in the next gender item.

I believe we've run out of papers on the deck.

Andy Healy.

Yeah, just one quick question.

The overall cost of these officers...

Oh, and the command chain is what's interesting above the sergeant's.

Sorry, I didn't catch the question.

The overall cost...

The first question is the cost to the council, and the second question is the command chain

above the sergeants you mentioned.

So the overall budget that we're planning for, it's just shy of five million.

And that's all detailed in a paper which is online.

And in terms of the command chain, these will be ones where as police officers,

they will come, we will be working with the Met in terms of local priorities

and local locations, et cetera, but ultimately they will mean that the contracts are with

the Met. But in terms of the IET, obviously we'll have far more flexibility on that. There

will be council offices. Does that answer the question?

Not totally, no. They'll be under the command of the Metropolitan Police by their area,

by their area command, which is down in Kingston.

Yes. If Sabrina didn't get any more to comment on that.

So we're trying to finalise the plans at the moment.

The underlying thing would be they are Metropolitan Police Officers.

They come under the direction of the Commissioner.

They were set under me for Wandsworth.

And the aim is that they're deployed across the borough of Wandsworth.

There will be times when they may be abstracted to central functions.

but we're going through the detail of what that would look like and how many

of those officers will be probationary officers, what level of experience. We

want to supply the council with a team that is self -sufficient that can deploy

with minimal abstraction shall we say and and carry out the commitment that

the council are putting forward. Thank you. Any other questions in terms of the

additional police officers.

No, but I think just to finish off, and you just said it in your sentence there, the key

word here, these are additional police officers. We're not intending to replace the existing

provision, and I think that's key to understand that.

Thank you, Councillor. So, again, in the – apologies.

At what point will we have a bit more clarity on the officers and how they're going to be

deployed? Because at the end of the day, a lot of us here are from various wards and

we'd love some more officers. But the point is, are the council planning on, say, for

for example, just focusing these officers in hot spots

that pop up, maybe town centres and so on,

but what about the rest of us?

How does it work when it comes to us guys in the wards?

So at some point, I believe it's early stages,

so you're still working on this, is that correct?

Or is it all being fleshed out?

It depends what side of the thing you're talking about.

So on the police side of the thing,

we're getting close to signing the contract,

and we're getting close to having boots on the ground.

On the IET, so the enforcement team,

what we're doing in the paper,

we're signposting our ambition,

and is still work to be done on that, absolutely.

But in terms of your question about allocation of resources,

that will very much be driven by local priorities,

and where we think there's best use of those resources.

But they won't be fixed to a specific ward,

they will go where they're needed the most.

But I think the whole point is,

in six months time, we will have far more boots

on the ground and that's what you will be seeing

as a resident.

How many police do we have at the moment?

So I can see proportionally what 25 would feel like.

Currently the Wandsworth neighbourhood

has 120 officers in total.

That includes the inspectors, myself,

PCSOs and police officers.

Yeah, definitely.

Okay, I'd like to move on with the agenda, please,

and forgive us for taking questions there,

but the cabinet member needs to leave at 10 past seven

or thereabouts, so therefore we accepted questions

at the beginning.

Moving on to the minutes, in the interest of time,

to save 10 minutes, are there any objections

to agreeing that the minutes of the previous meeting

can be signed as a correct record?

Sorry, agreed. As there's no objections received, the minutes are unanimously agreed. Thank

you. And for the next item, Superintendent. Thank you.

Good evening everyone, it's a real pleasure to see so many of you here. I'll introduce

myself, I'm the neighbourhood superintendent for Wandsworth, I've been now here for three

years and the plan is to hang around for a good few more years subject to the Commissioner's

wishes. So I'll introduce you, my team, I've got Chief Inspector Ben Jure here and I've

I've got Inspector Paul James, who looks after Putney for me,

and Ali MacPherson, the Inspector for Tooting.

The Inspector for Battersea is off ill today,

that's Maggie Swalwell.

But collectively, this is your leadership team

for Wandsworth Neighbourhoods.

So I've got the pack that was prepared for you,

speaking with the Chair.

we wanted to make it far more data,

data light, shall we say,

but to talk more about the operations that we're running

because when you look at our trust and confidence figures,

my impression is that it doesn't philtre through

that there's a level of trust and confidence

that we're doing a good job.

But when you look at all of the various operations,

there is a lot of work,

and the inspectors will spend a bit more time

in talking through specific areas and where we've had some real successes.

So, looking through the next slide.

So, I just wanted to talk through with this one,

just key highlights on here. So, at the time of preparing this,

this is sort of through to the middle of last month,

but when you look at the improving figures for us,

ASB is showing a reduction, which in previous years

has always been on the up. The personal robbery and for us has always been Nine Elms and Tooting.

That's also, there's a lot of work gone into that. But one of the areas that we're starting to sort

of see that's a real concern for us is theft from motor vehicle and this is mainly fueled by people

stealing VW badges and behind the badge are sensors and these items I'm told can retail

Anything up to 500 pounds. So there's a loss of that that's going on. The replacement value is actually about five thousand pounds

Sorry for one of those units

Right, okay, so okay. Thank you for that

So, yeah, so that's the big

Driver for our theft from a motor vehicle

Neighbourhood offences as well, we're seeing a slight sort of deterioration in it.

But when we look at the positive outcome rates, they have shown improvement.

But also retail crime shoplifting has come down considerably since last year and certainly the year before.

And that's the sort of highlights there.

When we look at the next slide and that one I've taken the two quarters shall we

say or from April through to September when the pack was prepared to just sort

of give you some some of our strongest performance areas that those are the

sort of areas that are there so theft of motor vehicle again we've seen a

reduction but when we look at motor vehicle crime the driver is theft from

the motor vehicle. Personal robbery again, we've seen some drivers there, that's due

to a number of operations that have been run and when the Battersea update and

the Tooting update as well as Putney, the inspectors will go into further detail

in relation to that. So this again here is the overall position that

we're looking at when we compare that period, which for us is of our current period.

Again, hate crime we've seen as an area of concern and the chief inspectors working with

the local hospitals to identify what we can do in and around that.

But what we found, one of the generators for hate crime is being where people are being

in court for offences like shoplifting

or other public order offences,

one of the things they tend to do is use racial slur

or racial comments against either police officers

or members of staff, and that is a bit of a driver for us.

And what that has then resulted in is the positive outcome

so that hate crime has also increased.

when we've looked at hate crime for other hate crime types, they don't

necessarily follow any sort of pattern that we would see, but that's

work that we're working with the local authority on for a long -term

solution. Residential burglary with St Mary's at the moment is suffering from

Parcel thefts, which is a driver where the items are left in the porch and that's classed as a burglary.

And again, we've recently sought some funding to run extra operational activity in and around doing preventative work around that.

Business robbery, again, we've seen slight increases there, but again, that's working with the big retail outlets.

certainly working with Battersea Power Station, working with Southside and

Putney Exchange and other retailers which the inspectors will cover when

they speak to you. So we've had two homicides since we last met, sadly one

was, well they were both homicides and the individuals for those were

apprehended soon after the offence had been committed.

So those are the two that we've had.

Suspects been arrested and charged.

And the first one, Jamal Coombs,

the suspects involved were really, really young individuals.

So they, again, they were gold groups held

to sort of work alongside the council

to see how we support these youngsters,

but also mindful that they are also suspects so they've all been charged and and the case is ongoing and in the same with

The mr. Dale Mundell who's 34 year old male. He was he was murdered and then

put in a suitcase and and

Dropped off outside the Met but we've we were then notified of this officers then acted on that information

leading to finding him and then launching investigation and then leading to the arrest of two people who've been charged.

So the positive outcomes, again with hate crime, shoplifting, personal robbery and theft of motor vehicle,

these are comparing to previous years, again these are showing a positive trend in that they're going up.

There's still far more we can do in relation to this,

and this is an ongoing effort for us,

together with our response teams.

And what we've done with response teams,

whilst we're not 24 hours, as a trial,

we've paired up different wards with our response teams,

so when they're on, the ward teams will say to the response team,

we've got this issue in this area, can you go and have a look?

The issue with that is we can't ever guarantee the response teams are going to be available.

And certainly when I'm on shift, be it day shift or night shift, the response teams are

relentlessly going call to call and dealing with a lot of things.

So it's a question of if you're able to help, then help us.

And that's sort of proving to work because one of the results recently, officers had

attended patrol at a specific area,

came across some individuals dealing with drugs,

so they were arrested.

That was fed back to the neighbourhood team.

So it's a start, and I think the more we start to see that,

people can see value in it.

And certainly the response officers that I've worked with,

when they come and work with me,

neighbourhood policing is a real eye -opener for them

because they still think of neighbourhood policing

in years gone by when it was far less proactive,

far less crime fighting, it was more community -based,

whereas now we're far more going after the offenders,

victim -focused, and bringing these offenders to justice.

So when we look at weekly figures

compared to the four boroughs,

Wandsworth officers arrest more people.

But when we look at Kingston,

they've got a town centre team,

and solely they've got a focus on Kingston town centre.

But often you'll find that our officers

have arrested far more than the town centre team.

So it's not to say that they're not working hard.

It depends on what abstractions they've got.

But all I can assure you is that the officers, certainly

on Wandsworth, work really, really hard

in going after the offenders and getting them back

into custody.

So the trust and confidence figures,

the previous two quarters showed us on a decline.

The last one has shown us back up at 75%.

My aspiration is that we get that up to 80 %

and above Merton at 81%.

But a lot of Merton's confidence, I think,

comes from the fact they've promoted a lot of their work

on TV and the newspapers with a lot of the DNA marking

for shoplifting that was on the news and local news.

So the public have heard a lot more about what they've done.

So your question is why aren't you doing the same?

I am trying to do that, but at the moment

it's trying to get the comms and engagement

and to get that right level of support from them

for us to be able to do that,

because it's not just a question of how I have to put it out.

I have to go through a number of different channels

to get different bits authorised to do that.

And at the moment, that's work in progress

of what we're trying to do.

Quickly.

So this is a quick summary from April to September,

where we are, as I see it, looking at all the various data.

The red, amber and green, the red bits for me,

the Thefel motor vehicle, vehicle offences and hate crime,

and that's where our focus is,

in addition to the other areas of work that we're doing.

So the ASB slide, when we look at ASB, the blue line is the last 12 months and the grey

one is the previous and you'll see that that's showing that we're dropping.

And then when you look at violence against women again you see a significant drop there

as well. So if we skip the next slide, if we skip this one and then, so on this

policing operations I'm just going to hand you over to Chief Inspector Ben

Dury who will talk you through this. Thank you sir.

Evening ladies and gentlemen.

So on Wandsworth sector itself, we're covering a number of operations at the moment.

So you may or may not have been aware, last month for September, the whole of September,

we conducted Operation Reckoning, which is basically targeting secondhand stores

selling counterfeit goods, mobile phones, etc. Apple being one of the most prevalent phones to be counterfeited, products wise.

We target probably overall across the whole of the BCU, so the whole of Southwest, over

150 shops and got a lot of intel in relation to that, which we're linking in with trading

standards and going back to Apple again.

Two seconds.

OpTray, I won't steal Ali's thunder, but he'll cover that, but it's an operation over at

Tooting Broadway covering Vogue, Vons with Injury and Robbery and ASB.

Operation Sky Rift and Catchclaw is targeting

5th Persons and Sirom bikes.

We had a major issue down at Nine Alms,

where we had suspects coming from across the border

from Lambeth side.

We've been working alongside Lambeth as well

in relation to reducing those offences

in which Mr. Rajan's already covered already.

Op Zoridum, we're starting next week

in relation to handling stolen goods

from shops and around the whole of the BCU.

So it's a map wide operation,

but we've got an operation next week, which we're targeting.

Op trade win, summer burglary plan.

So that's working alongside our proactive department

and targeting burglaries in and around Battersea.

And as Mr. Bajan said, we have had ups and downs,

but we're sitting on a level playing field.

Operation Cubo, the majority of decent operations,

unfortunately for myself, I've been over at Putney which Inspector James will cover off

very shortly but that's a targeting e -bikes, disruption of criminal use in transports to

move about the borough itself. So we've had a couple down our side as well over at Battersea,

we've seen a number of e -bike sees, I'll cover it off in our Battersea update shortly.

Operation Wingman was initially set up with BTP working alongside those but that's

targeting retail crime shoplifting ASB,

using targeting suspects utilising the transport system,

permanently from Clapham Junction itself.

Operation Reef Watch, again,

that's a target in motor vehicle crime.

One, I won't still wear Alice Funder again,

but one of his officers identified a suspect

in relation to that.

And Mr. McPherson I'll cover that up shortly.

Operation Kodak is a targeted knife -enabled crime and prevention

weapon sweep with a Clapham Junction bid sweeps in the estates. So that's as a

result of the murder of Jamal Coombs which Mr. Rajan covered up earlier.

We've seized a number of knives from the local estates in the area which Maggie's

been quite prevalent in putting out on MetEngage. You may have seen them already.

Operation Sceptre is a knife crime prevention enforcement. Retailers visited

and test purchases carried out.

So that's where basically we'll target certain shops

selling sharp instruments

and seeing if they're selling them to underage individuals.

And live facial recognition operations,

we normally hold those in both tooting

and clapping junction.

We've had some really good results

in relation to those recently.

We had a couple over at clapping junction

and a couple over at tooting,

where on average we see seven arrests from each operation.

We are looking at spreading out over to Nine Alhams shortly as well. So you may see officers down there in the near future

Operational nights again that will be over the end of October. So Halloween and fireworks

Weekend in which we'll have an uplifting officers are working their later shifts and targeting both ASB fireworks and violent crime over those periods

So thank you very much

So if I pass across, if you can load up the tuting presentation,

Ali you've got five minutes and then Putney and PJ you've got about five

and then you've got less than that.

So and then we'll try and get back on time.

Can I just say one of the vehicle operations that Ali was alluded to by Ben, we can't really go into a lot of detail on that, that is a live operation that's running and I'm mindful that this is a public meeting, it'll just give you an awareness that we've got an operation on it.

Good evening everybody. Alan, the first inspector for Tooting. Bear in mind with the times I

will do just the highlights and then as the boss said we will be ready for questions afterwards

so quite happy to do that. The war priorities, every War Chair is aware of them and they

have been part of the building the war priorities so there should be nothing on there that is

and not any ordinary.

Emerging crime, so,

theft from motor vehicle, VW badge,

has been stolen from the front of cars.

As the boss said, it was our war team

that identified the trend.

We do look at our figures

and we see what's affecting our community.

There is an operation in the place at the moment.

My team are very involved in it,

but it is progression and then hopefully within the next SMB I'll be able to say these are the results

and this is how far we've come through that.

So at the back I'm quite happy to talk afterwards as well, should you need to.

Drug dealing, drug use for the op tray, we've noticed that tooting was a hot spot.

There was a lot of drug use around there and we'd had spike in instances as well, so I'll go into that in a minute.

and we created this operation to give support to in Broadway.

Also, e -bike complaints operations put in place

to cheque documents on users, resulting seizures.

There's been a difference in the Broadway

around the, and the other roads,

in a way that some drivers conduct themselves.

And there was some arrests down on the Broadway,

and now if you go down there, there is,

they are conducting themselves where the parking,

as we've asked them to, so they're not as problematic

for members of the public. Ward activities, so concentrating the walk, two in common,

proactive operation down there to identify exposure during the summer, two males arrested

for outrage and public decency, stopping searches for people who had cannabis whilst they were

still doing the operation down there. The support of a male had made females who were

breastfeeding feel very uncomfortable. The S &T officers took statements and issued a

DPW to the mail with condition around attendance at location.

Again, in the broad way, officer conducts an operation

with the task force using a passive drugs dog.

Operation was conducted on a Saturday evening

and essentially being a deterrent to prevent

striking, sorry, spiking offences committed on members

of the public travelling into the market at night out.

I will go into the results in a moment.

And then safeguarding, cuckooing part of that,

which we're gonna explain in a minute from somebody else,

but one of our locations, there was a warrant at the address

and we arrested two males with over 200 wraps

of Class A drugs and we're obviously looking

after the vulnerable person at that address as well.

Again, what we did, we've now, just to highlight that,

to help out down at the Broadway,

we've aligned furs down with Sergeant Chung,

where her has two in, sorry, has third down,

two in Beck at South Ballum,

and PS Paul has responsibility for two in Broadway on her own.

And she's been given a bit more freedom

to do as much operations,

but the way that we work on Wandsworth is

if we've got an issue on one of the areas,

we'll put everybody together to fight that issue

and fight that crime, and then move it round again.

And we've had some good results, which I'll go on to.

Right, so over the summer activities,

271 suspects arrested and over September there was an extra 20 on that.

128 persons stopped and searched.

We've now had three CBOs give them criminal behaviour orders

around shoplifting, two community protection notices

and 13 community protection warnings.

So this is some of the stuff that we've got in our sort of weaponry

that we can use to fight crime.

And there was 36 out of court disposals.

Shoplifting was produced by 22%, robbery was produced by 40 % and theft snatched by 88%.

Again, a little picture there of the facial recognition.

We love it, lots of good results and also people on registers that we wouldn't normally see,

they get highlighted to us as well and sometimes they've done stuff that have breached our orders

and we've had free arrests out of that as well.

so it has a proactive side to it as well, some good results.

The drug stock, eight individuals arrested, 72 stop and searches over the period,

18 out of court disposals and seized quantities of cocaine, MDMA and amphetamine.

Joint operation home office, bikes were seized, three arrests were made,

one arrest for failing to appear and then three mopeds were seized

and one was a stolen bike as well.

Traffic operations, we've been doing that,

so down at Garrett Lane, just as a presence,

and dealing with all the issues that we can do

around social behaviour with driving.

Total of 50 vehicles will stop to that,

three arrests out of that.

Also done drugs warrants, and as we said,

about to go in, and then we utilise whatever

proactive teams we can to assist us.

And then that was the drugs that was taken

from the warrant that we done.

Sorry Liam, I'm going quicker than, apologies.

Yes, and that's it from the slide buys.

Have I still got time?

Still good.

But also we're still carrying on.

There was a problem with bikes being stolen, push bikes.

So we put a bike with a tracker in it

down at a big location where the bike's been stolen.

The bike didn't get touched on this location,

but somebody got arrested for interfering with other bikes.

So we moved the bike down to Broadway

and within seven hours it was taken,

the bike was tracked to an address

and we arrested someone down there.

So we are doing as much as we can kind of,

when the information intelligence comes in,

we will act on it.

That is it, but I'm ready for anything afterwards

when anyone wants to talk to me.

Thank you, Jay.

Good evening everyone, sorry to those that are behind me, I've got a look at the back

of my head. I'm PJ, I'm the Inspector for Putney Sector, I moved over there in January,

have improved as you've been covering most of the borough. Just wait for Lee's presentation

to load up.

Chat amongst yourselves.

The first slide's gonna be the same.

It's gonna have the war priorities on there

which you can see on the MET website anyway.

I'll start talking.

Yeah, so that's your war priorities.

That just gives you a snapshot.

Obviously we deal with everything

but those are the priorities that our war panels

have put in place so far.

If I go to the next slide please.

So emerging crime sort of offences in the Putney area at this time, theft offences including shoplifting and theft of parcels,

illegal use of e -bikes and the associated crimes that happen by people often using those modes of transport,

road safety really is mainly to do with antisocial cycling, theft of pedal cycle and antisocial behaviour.

Just around the theft offences,

obviously we go out and we arrest people,

that's a little bit obvious,

but what we're trying to do is we're trying to get

to the root cause of it with people.

So when we get repeat offenders,

we will send them to court with not just one offence,

but we try and group them all together

so we get a heavier sentence,

and then we're going for the criminal behaviour orders,

which we're putting areas that they can't come into,

which actually hopefully stops them.

although some keep coming back.

One of our favourites on Puntney High Street

got arrested again yesterday

for their criminal behaviour order breach.

But yeah, so we're trying to sort of

do preventative measures as well.

We've had lots of success from our local community

around theft of parcels where they've been sending in

video doorbell footage,

which if we don't know who those people are,

we put them through facial recognition technology,

find out who they are, and then go out and arrest them.

and we've also put in some intelligence meetings,

working with our partners, Southside,

businesses against crime and other people,

where we share intelligence

and try and work on those together,

because obviously Southside have got

their own private security as well.

So it's all working together with our partners.

And then retailers, we've been,

as Chief Inspector -General said,

we've been doing work with trading standards,

where we've been going in, looking for stolen mobile phones.

We're going to be doing some test purchasing around fireworks and we have also been going

into some of our vape shops as well, especially around Putney High Street where we've been

having issues and we're working on those along with our partners.

If we go to the next slide please.

So there's some photos of some of the operations we've done around e -bikes.

We've seized, actually that's about 130 now because we did an operation last week.

So since January we've had over 100 e -bikes and other vehicles seized, but mainly e -bikes

and about 350 people have been reported to court for, where I've put road traffic offences,

that might be cycling through red lights as well, but I've just lumped them all in together.

The photo in the middle there, you might have seen it on the television as well, that's

around an operation called Op Lexand where the central specialist team come in, put them

on that rolling road and then we get the evidence

to seize them and take these people to court.

20 vehicles were seized that day

and they are coming back to Putney next week as well.

So that's been really useful.

Inspector, are we seeing a resulting reduction

in other crimes such as phone snatching, et cetera,

as more and more bikes are coming off the road?

We, on Putney sector, we are getting more of sort of people transitioning through, travelling through our wards.

So this photo's here, the sewer on there on the left hand side, that electric bike with the big knife, that was West Hill, so was the one in the middle.

They're sort of coming through West Hill, Roehampton and then often going up to Kingston as well, to the Cambridge estate.

So on Putney itself we're not getting a massive amount of phone snatches.

We do get a few but they have as are reduced is what we've had.

So yeah, so these photos here these are just some of the, as you can see my

officers are out there. I would say they're being quite brave because that

that knife on the left to just give you an idea of how long that is the lad who

was taken off of that bike by my team,

that was down the whole length of his leg.

It was from his hip down to his foot.

So you can see that that's a pretty nasty weapon,

to say the least.

So yeah, so these are things that these people are carrying,

they're drug dealing, you know,

committing all sorts of crimes.

So it's really important work that we're doing.

And my officers do take, they are, you know,

these people do fight us.

They don't want to be caught with those weapons on.

So, yeah, my team have been out there

doing a lot of hard work.

If we go to the next slide.

So these are some of the drugs we've been seizing

around the borough, sorry, around Putney.

And just the reason I put this on there,

you'll see there's, on most of them,

there's quite a lot of cash that gets seized.

Quickly, what we do is we seize that

under the proceeds of Crime Act

and where I work at Jubilee House,

we've got the economic crime team upstairs.

We've been working with them

and then they've been going to court

the cash has been forfeited to us

and then we can then use some of that cash

to go out and do overtime

and actually some of that overtime was spent this weekend

and the team got another three drug dealers off the streets

with knives.

So we are using their money to fund policing on the sector,

which is something that's quite new

that we've only been doing recently.

One of my sergeants, Sergeant Simmonds,

has been leading that,

which I think is really important work.

Next slide.

I'm not going to talk too much about cuckooing,

but I led on cuckooing week of action.

As you can see there, in a week we visited 32 properties

that have been identified with persons in there

that may be subject to cuckooing.

They were all visited, 24 residents spoken to.

We safeguarded 11 people, four people were arrested,

drugs seized, et cetera.

But I'm not going to steal Victoria's thunder

because she's going to do a presentation on cuckooing,

so she'll explain what cuckooing is about.

But I am the lead for Wandsworth,

and we are doing some real targeted work around that

to safeguard people.

And a lot of antisocial behaviour

comes associated with those properties,

so that does reduce our ASB.

And my final slide is just some of our

crime -focused community engagement.

We are trying to get out there.

The engagement has changed a lot to crime.

And the main new initiative is the bottom right.

that's called UniSafe, which we did the first one at Runout to University last week,

on Refreshers Week, and that's getting us into a younger demographic, which we do struggle

with, you know, young people don't want to, it's not cool to be seen talking to the police.

But it's safe, you know, they come to us, we get a lot of international students there

as well, that may not be quite so streetwise, so we're doing a lot of work with them, that's

led by the university, but also staff,

if they have any issues, they can come to us as well

at those, and we'll be at those each month.

And that's it for puttting, I'll keep it short and sweet,

because I'm sure we'll get some questions afterwards.

Thank you, and we're now moving on to Battersea.

I'm conscious we've done the sectors in reverse,

so for those looking at the papers and confusing,

it starts on page 35 for Battersea.

Thank you PJ. Lee when you're ready. Brilliant. Next slide please. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen,

as you can see Battersea cluster itself. So I'm covering for Maggie, Mr. Vijayam mentioned

his company off hill at the moment, but we cover Falkenbrook, St Mary's, Lavender, North

Cote, Ballam, Battersea Park, Shaftesbury and Queenstown and Nine Alms, all of which

extremely busy sectors to work. We have obviously Battersea Power Station, US Embassy, Clapham

Junction on our patch as well. So it's really busy at the moment. Lee, next slide please.

Thank you. So at the moment Maggie's been leading on a number of operations down Operation

Wingman which I mentioned earlier, targeting retail crime ASB. So they deployed last week,

with a week commencing 28th through to the 4th.

And down at...

focusing on issues in the current wards,

flexing staff across to assist, resulting this week alone,

well, that week, four arrests, two for shoplifting,

adapted off weapon, burglary,

and a burglary in Shaftesbury and Queenstown as well.

So 19 stopping searches, four of which were positive,

two Comreses, one CPN, one CPW,

One for how to stop the shoot, drug importation, four ASB warnings and ten intel reports as

well, which was a really good result.

Opcodiac knife enabled crime, as I mentioned beforehand, glycinolode murder.

We've had a number of weapon sweeps recently down in North Coast to develop their knowledge

and where to look, what to look for and how to forensically manage any fines.

Operation Skyriff, as I mentioned beforehand, has targeting theft snatches mobile devices

down at 9 Alms Lane and also Battersea Park Road. We've had some really good results

down there recently working alongside Proactiv and as Mr. Véjane mentioned our figures,

well the data shows we're getting less crime down there now which is good.

Operation Cubo, similar to what PJ mentioned beforehand, targeting vehicle ASB crime, deported

to Sheepcote Lane on the 19th of June. 60 stops of e -bikes, 6 e -bike sees, riders

arrested, processed to court for a variety of offences, one arrest for a

prolific offender for possession of machete and 36 wraps of Class A, charged

and remanded and LFR again as I mentioned beforehand. Next slide please

Lee. So this is a number of weapons seized and were found during Operation

Kodiak that was during August this year in Nine Alms area of that cluster so you

could see firearm number of knives machetes etc next slide please and again

an average police arrest so seven wanted missing offenders every time we deploy

LFR since March 2026 LFR has been deployed to Clavin Junction

approximately every six to eight weeks offences include failing to appear at

domestic and sexual offenders, along with drug dealers bringing them to justice.

Above is an example of a foot chase where approximately three quarters of

Class A drugs were recovered at the scene and addresses searched. Next slide please.

Operation Cubo, as mentioned beforehand, deployed on the 19th of June, number of

e -bikes seized and 60 stops. And next slide please. And again Operation Wingman,

which I mentioned beforehand.

And last slide please, Lee.

Thank you.

We've got a bike marking event on the 13th of this month, Battersea Power Station, Crime

Prevention Education Stalls on the 13th and 10th again, same location, along with Met

Engage, DNA tagging, street briefings, ward panel meetings in October and WAVG Safe Space

events, a December issue, and a couple of a copper, again on the 13th of the 10th. And

that's it from me, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, inspectors. I suggest we keep the questions to the end, et cetera, and we're

pleased to welcome Victoria, who's going to give us a presentation around cuckooing and

exploitation along with Lee.

For those looking at the deck, we're now onto page 61.

Okay.

For those who don't know me, my name's Victoria.

I'm the antisocial behaviour manager

brought into a new ASB team in Wandsworth

to cover specifically the North Battersea area,

about the cuckooing work that is across the whole of Wandsworth.

And part of the work of my team was

to introduce a cuckooing protocol.

I will go on to explain what that is for Wandsworth,

because historically we didn't have one.

So I'll go to legislation first.

So for those who aren't familiar with the term,

cuckooing is defined in legislation

as controlling another's home for criminal purposes.

So a person commits an offence if they exercise control

over someone else's property for drug offences, exploitation.

Cooking takes various different forms

and looks different across all cases.

But the picture in Wandsworth, we

didn't have a standardised way of dealing with these cases.

They were coming through safeguarding meetings,

professionals meetings through the community safety team.

The Safer Neighbourhood team didn't have a standardised way

of kind of raising this with us.

We didn't have a way of tracking it.

And we would, the police were dealing with cuckooing

through various different legislations,

modern slavery act and social behaviour crime policing act.

A few different ones that are listed there.

But new legislations come in to define it

as a standalone offence.

It's very new, so we're still waiting on statutory guidance

on how to go about prosecuting someone for cuckooing

as a standalone offence.

But this is a great move to recognising cuckooing as a crime.

So common challenges with cuckooing offences

are that the tenant, for an example,

is a tenant repeatedly allowing an exploiter

into the property, a tenant receiving

some form of exchange, drugs, money, alcohol for that person,

storing drugs at the house, for using the property,

for staying there, whatever kind of form that's taken.

And there's often a complex relationship

between the exploiter and the tenant.

Often it's a relative, a claimed relative,

and we're not quite sure who that person is.

And an associate that was made,

and they've kind of caught wind of where that person lives,

an ex -partner, anything like that.

There are different discussions about consent.

Does the tenant have capacity to allow that person

into the property to maintain that friendship?

And all cases look very different.

So yeah, a focus of my team was to kind of standardise

the process of dealing with these cases.

So we introduced a cooking protocol in April.

We are currently accepting cooking referrals

from professionals into our C -MARAC,

for those who don't know what that is,

that's our Community Multi -Agency Risk Assessment

Conference, which we hold once a month with professionals

to discuss quite complex cases, monitor them,

get input from people at higher levels within agencies,

and monitor these as we go through.

So our CUCUIN cases are now heard

at the latter half of the C -MARAC,

which previously we didn't have before my team came in.

and then Project ADDA, who I won't go into,

but are a division within the police.

They are implementing a cooking protocol across London.

They've just got to Wandsworth

and are looking at what that process will look like.

They hold the intelligence tracker.

My team works really closely with them.

They have a list of vulnerable people, repeat victims,

addresses, perpetrators, alongside our CMRAC.

to help assist with these discussions and in that case the police are holding the risk.

As PJ mentioned there is now a dedicated Inspector and Sergeant within the safer neighbourhood teams

who are the cuckooing single point of contacts who I can work with. Professionals are able to raise

their concerns directly into an inbox which is monitored by the Sergeant and the Project

offences are assisting with that as we're implementing and changing risk assessments

and things like that. So since then, we as the Council have received 15 referrals onto

our cooking wing panel. We've organised professionals meetings and worked with partners to coordinate

an approach. I've got a quick example to whiz through. So this is an example of a referral

we received from the police into our CMRAC inbox.

Officers referred this one in the Safer Neighbourhood team.

They were concerned about dangerous males

being known to police attending,

I've called her X in this instance, X's address,

and that they're concerned that she's easily influenced.

They had a couple of red flags that they raised,

so the fire alarms were covered, the lock was broken,

people were constantly bussing intercoms to other flats

because she may not let them in otherwise.

So there's an element of does this person consent

to other people entering the property?

People entering and leaving, suspected drug use and supply.

Multiple men were at the address

and were often wanted by police.

So the Safer Neighbourhood team flagged this with us,

made the referral so we could take action

before whenever the C -MARROC was.

And the officers were hoping that they could help,

get help with a closure order

and supporting her where she needs it,

both physically and mentally,

because often she doesn't follow through

with support herself.

So on the C -MARC, this is an example of the actions

that we agreed with, agreed on, sorry.

One of them was for me to clarify with the estate manager

whether a transfer or possession is being pursued

at the property and coordinate housing actions

for the Safer Neighbourhood team to arrange a joint visit

with Drug and Alcohol Outreach Services,

mental health, fire brigade to assess risks,

and for my team to arrange a professional's meeting

to review the case and report back to the CMARC,

and we will keep the case on for next month.

So, multiple professionals made contact with her,

the tenant, and a joint visit was scheduled

with all of the agencies.

However, the Safer Neighbourhood team in this case

were really proactive, and they had flagged the address

to attend regularly anyway for welfare cheques.

They attended the address earlier than the first date that other agencies were free and

found her in a confused state with the property open. They sectioned X and took her to hospital

and notified us all. In this case, they were really proactive. All agencies had an email

thread and everybody was really involved in the case. So officers made us aware as soon

as this has happened that the address was obviously insecure and unoccupied. So we reached

out to the estate manager, it was one of our ones with housing properties to clarify their

involvement and raise the concerns with them. The estate manager gave a lengthy history,

which I won't go into for time reasons, but the estate manager was now aware of the new

concerns and was able to be involved in her discharge discussions. So they were able to

make contact with the clinical professionals involved in the case and kind of express concern

for her returning back to that property and what that might look like for her. So she

was discharged to her home address because clinical professionals deemed her to be able

to manage her recovery in the community. However, the estate manager visited her at home, raised

the work order for the doors to be secured,

and had those discussions with her

about whether she would want to stay in the property,

to which she accepted a temporary accommodation offer.

So, the old property is now Sytex,

preventing further access.

The Safer Neighbourhood team and her new ward

have been made aware of her vulnerabilities to exploitation,

and a risk assessment was complete,

case removed from C -MARRAC,

and then there was ongoing work

to tackle the exploiters in this case.

So as I mentioned previously, cases do take various forms,

but here this person was very vulnerable,

the property was insecure and we were able to

kind of join all agencies together,

make sure that that person was safeguarded

and link everybody.

I think that's, all right, I kind of covered it here.

So great initiative was shown by professionals,

the safer neighbourhood team were really on it.

Same with the estate manager,

they had that knowledge to have those discussions with her

when they went to fix the door.

And in this case, the offer was made

for temporary accommodation,

she accepted and attended the office.

So that's really positive.

And as we know, closures, notice of seeking possessions,

things like this take a long time with the court.

So it was really great that multiple avenues

were explored at the same time.

and we were able to share knowledge,

make the relevant referrals,

and ultimately safeguard that victim.

But yeah, that's an example of some of the work we're doing.

I was heavily involved in the Cooking Week of Action

that PJ spoke about,

and my team were able to link the offices

and attend some of the addresses ourselves

with other professionals and agencies

that maybe Project Adder or the Safer Neighbourhood team

wouldn't have access to otherwise.

Yeah, that's it from me.

But this works all on going.

It's ever changing.

I also have a steering group,

which are regularly reviewing the process.

And Project Adder are also looking at changes

they can make to their risk assessments.

Well, that was a fantastic presentation.

I think the council are lucky to have you.

So welcome, and we appreciate it and things.

Moving on, I'm conscious of the time.

We've got half an hour for questions.

So it's my suggestion that, I know Andy's here,

but Andy's gonna be ready and waiting for questions

when we come to them at the end.

So on that basis, due to time constraints,

I propose that we take this report

on independent stop and search for information.

Does anyone resist or against that?

No? Thank you. But I would say with that, we're very appreciative, Andy, and your team

for putting a written update to the panel. We've also had an update from Martha and Carla

on the independent custody visiting, but unfortunately neither of them could make it. They've both

got travels at the moment. So on that basis, and again for time constraint reasons, I wish

to free up some time for questions at the end.

So I'm gonna take this one for information

and please feel free to reach out to any of us afterwards

if you'd like a follow -up on any particular points.

And then lastly, the ward panel updates.

And I can say there's a fantastic amount of input

from ward chairs I'd like to put on my record.

I think there's thanks from everyone

to all the voluntary ward chairs

that commit many hours over the course of the year,

either trying to recruit people to attend meetings,

engage with police and partner agencies,

and Lee's community safety team.

So I think there's a word of thanks there,

but I'll take this as an information piece,

allowing people to have a pre -read,

because I really wish to swiftly move on to questions.

Is that okay?

Thank you.

We've had some pre -submitted questions

from three individuals.

Is Trevor here?

Trevor, do you want to go ahead please?

Hi there.

My concern was about how this was advertised

and looking at the amount of people here,

there's not very many ordinary people from around the borough.

It's a large borough, covers a very large area,

and we're not reaching out to everyone.

We've tried to sort of reach out to our particular ward.

It is tricky, but there are ways that the council can use.

There are various papers, there are various websites.

Tootin Newsy, Ballum Newsy.

There's lots of ways that this could have been advertised earlier and hopefully would

have got more response.

You know, we're not truly representing the general public because, you know, we're all

involved, we're dealing with the issues that we know about.

I'm very sort of certain from the way that I work in my board that when I look at the

different crimes committed on our website, on our local chat groups. We're lucky if

we get 10 reported. I realise we are not reaching those people, those victims, enough. And,

you know, it's how do you reach them? How do you reach out to them? Brightside is published

four times a year. It is published, unfortunately, in October after this meeting when I look

back at the times that this meeting has been called, the July one is too early to advertise,

although it would have helped if something had been in there. If you really want a true

response from the general public, you've got to advertise, you've got to put it out there

to get these people. You know, we reach out to probably five, six thousand people in our

board, we've got 18 ,400. So, you know, I'm just concerned that as a public meeting, once

a year, that we really do need to reach out to the general public.

I'm very grateful, Trevor, and obviously we've spoken offline about this. I think our weakness

has been printed, publication and promotion of this meeting. I'm very grateful to Lee

and Mrs. Burke for promoting this two weeks ago

on Instagram, on Facebook, on Nectore,

on the digital version of Brights Park,

and also to the police team for promoting Via Met Engage,

and of course the esteemed neighbourhood watch chair

Jan Forbes for promoting at her meeting last night.

But I take on board your comments of printed

for those that aren't digitally engaged.

I think it's a challenge we've got, probably as a borough.

I remember the days of having the Wandsworth Guardian

come through my letterbox every week

when I lived in Putney years ago.

But thank you, Trevor.

Questions from Stacy Smith, please.

Hi, my first question is, we've had a few break -ins over at Goldfinch Primary School

over the summer and it's highlighted some communication issues between the offices and

the teams that were dealing with the break -ins. I just wanted to know what measures are being

implemented to improve the intelligence between sharing communication and accountability between

in the different police departments.

So just an example, the burglary team,

they responded to the break -ins,

but our dedicated ward officers weren't aware of that.

So what's the communication?

Because we've got dedicated officers,

how comes we're not getting that intel reported back to them

so they're aware of what's going on?

Inspector, do you want to pick this one up?

I have given a full explanation on there, but just in relation to that, we do have daily

crimes, the ward officers do look at their overlights, sometimes if they're not in they

may miss it for a couple of days. Between us and the response team, the communication

is improving and we are also going to training days for the response team and getting that

communication with us and saying what matters to us and to our community. So there is improvement,

things are improving and really I suppose we'll see that on the next event. But at any

times any of the ward panel chairs, any of the wards, you can always email us and contact

to us on our details as well. It's on the Met website if you see something that we don't,

because sometimes if there's a crime we will get informed, but if it's something that's

not been crime we may not hear about that straight away. But certainly communication

with us we've got no issues with at all.

And Stacey, I believe you had a question about violence against women and girls.

Okay, sorry, yeah. So that's one of our priorities. We're aware that the rates have gone down,

but the panel question whether this represents a genuine reduction or it's underreporting,

and I wanted to know what measures are being taken to assess the true extent of org, what

sort of preventive policing is being going on as well to expand the safe spaces and improve

women's safety among first -hand.

Please hit Inspector.

Again, I'll vote this up.

I don't know if Lee's got the print on there,

the reply, if we can put it on the screen

where you might not have our answers.

So I have answered that more fuller,

and I can go through that with you.

if I haven't got the bait and what I've put on there.

But just from memory to in racetrack,

there were some issues down there.

Officers have had support from the mobile CCTV vans

and there's other sort of engagement stuff

working with our partners,

but I have got more that I've written down,

which I can go through with you afterwards,

if that's all right, so to say.

And I think the other question, Stacey, you had was about motorcyclists and cyclists,

and I think this is a borough -wide problem, so maybe frame it as a borough -wide issue

for perhaps the superintendent to respond to.

Sure, yeah. I mean, it's no secret what's going on around Blackborough Road, Eardley

and Leveson Street.

The measures that were put in place are just ineffective.

Every single day we're getting mopeds, motorbikes,

cyclists going across the Triangle,

which is a major hazard to pedestrians.

There was some signage put on the floor.

I mean, people don't even recognise it.

I mean, it doesn't even deter anyone.

No sort of camera is gonna work.

Any sort of camera we've mentioned

is not on offer, so we can't use that.

So it's left to the residents to report things.

Now these things are going at breakneck speeds,

and once, you know, by the time you've got your phones,

or even try and record, they're off.

It happens throughout the day, every sort of time.

Weekends, often it's deliveros.

Sometimes you've got the Tour de France going through there.

I mean, nothing's slowed down, none of the measures have worked.

Bollards are ineffective as well,

because of a barrier to people with disabilities and wheelchairs,

and I understand that, but nothing stopped.

Nothing stopped it at all.

No signage is working, and I just need to know now,

because it's still ongoing.

Nothing's slowed down at all.

What can happen for the residents around First Down?

Because I think at this point it's ridiculous,

and it's just an accident waiting to happen at this point.

Thank you, Stacey.

So these are the sort of questions

I hope you're raising at the wall panel as well. So

There's a detailed written response being submitted to all of the questions which will be in the pack that's gone

I will go out to you all

But within that what I've asked is for inspector Ali McPherson to work with the local authorities to review what we've currently got

because the response from the council was that they'd extended the railings along the early road towards the bin and

Installed a panel

to the corner by the flank wall. So I haven't visited that area so I don't know the logistics

of what that looks like but all I can show you is that we will review that we'll work with you and

as part of that written response what I've asked is it'd be really good if you could be part of that

consultation group and work with us and we do a long -term problem solving. Paul James has got a

sergeant who lives and breathes traffic as you can tell from all of the seizures that he's had

So we'll rope him in as well and then he can give us his traffic expertise and we can try and do something around it.

Thank you Superintendent. Stacey, I know you had one other question around Garrick House.

My request on time is are you able to pick it up with the inspector afterwards, please?

We've got one other pre -submitted question from Alexandra Mizari.

Please, please speak into the mic and ensure it's turned on.

Hello.

Well, I think I need to address my question

for Inspector James.

I have a daughter, she's 15 years old.

Normally we go every week to South Side shopping centre,

and I stopped to allow her to go because there are so many things happening inside

the shopping and I'm getting more and more I have more and more anxiety

because of that. It's shoplifting, it's people screaming, it's things that you

see that is not correct.

If I can say gangs of kids sometimes

threatening people and I just want to know why

there is no police inside the Southside shopping centre all around the area, all around the parks.

Why the people, why the police is not

uh...

be visible

for everybody

uh... all the areas outside

or outside in front of the Sainsbury's supermarket

they are important area that many people go there

to shopping everyday

but it's being very uh... sometimes it's critical some areas there

how how are you addressing now that

that concern for mums that needs to put the kids there,

but it's being very, it's almost dangerous.

Sorry to say that.

What's happening in that area, in this area in general?

Thank you for your question.

I'm sorry you feel unsafe there,

but my teams are down there every day there at work.

You may not always see them

because they're not always in uniform

because to try and tackle some of the crime,

we have to go out in plain clothes to catch the people.

But my team are down there every day.

My PCSOs, they always wear uniform.

They're down there.

Southside itself, we work really closely with Southside,

Rob Davis down at Southside.

And what you need to obviously understand

is Southside have their own security.

My officers go in there and do a lot of work with them,

but the primacy sits with security at Southside

because it is a private, it's technically a private venue.

So they take the primacy on security.

We have just recently done a training day with them,

our Sergeant Sam Simmons and the team,

they went down and did a training day with them

to try and explain a bit more around

what they can probably do a little bit more

around powers, et cetera.

I do understand concerns of people

when they see large groups of kids,

but a lot of those groups of kids aren't,

they might look scary because there's 20 of them.

I'm not saying they don't commit any offences,

but a lot of them actually go down there and behave,

and they're just being kids.

But we do go in there.

I would not say it's unsafe down there at all.

The crime stats don't say that.

Yes, there's shoplifting, there is.

And again, like I explained earlier,

we're working with security,

we're working with Rob at the centre.

A lot of it, if it's occurring when my team aren't there,

we're getting the Cease TV,

we're running that through facial recognition,

we're arresting people, we're getting banning orders put in.

There's a lot of work going on down there,

but this, a lot of it is probably more

antisocial behaviour going on down there,

and that is one of the reasons that,

I know the council, obviously,

they talked about these 25 officers.

I'm not saying you're gonna get 25 there,

but it might be that we can utilise them

in a hotspot of policing for this type of incident,

because obviously, the team there

are a few officers that are dedicated there,

but you know, when we get issues,

It's not just my teams go down there, we've got proactive teams, we've got our response teams,

we've got all sorts of people that do go down there.

But unfortunately, visibility, I know people go,

I never see police and it is an issue.

I was down there the other day with my whole team.

I was down there for hours because we were doing an event and I went up to see Rob.

I know they're down there, but unfortunately people say they don't see them.

But how often, you know, when you're down there, they may not be there.

It can be coincidence.

You know, where I live, I know the police are there,

I just don't see them a lot of the time,

because maybe this time of year I don't see them.

So we are working really hard down there doing work.

So yeah, I'm sorry that your daughter feels unsafe,

but there is a lot of work going on down there.

But all I would say is encourage you to report anything

that happens and maybe timings and locations,

because obviously it's quite a big area down there,

lots of exits, et cetera, and we're working with them

to try and sort of problem solve the area as well,

where we've got sometimes people going through the goods yards

because they're left open, et cetera.

So there's a lot of work going on.

I just encourage you to report it to the local team, which

you can find it on the Metropolitan Police website.

Just put the location in, and it will

take you direct to that team, and they can deal with it.

Yeah, but they are working hard down there.

And working with Community Safety,

the CCTV cars were down there for three, four months.

They were specifically targeting that area

and doing a lot of work.

So there is work going on.

Thank you for raising it.

Thanks so that we know your concerns.

All I'd say is if you're ever there or your daughter's there

and there's something that they feel unsafe about,

please phone in and let the police know that we can respond to it.

Sometimes it's also perhaps a perception and surprising

that when we arrive at some scenes, things are really calm.

The Chief Inspector and I were out on patrol, believe it or not.

Last month, call comes in and we're at the far end of Tooting

and there was a group of 30 children, balaclavered,

and talking about a knife attack.

So we responded, we're the first on scene,

they're all happy, having lunch outside Sainsbury's.

So we were a bit of entertainment for them, free lunchtime entertainment.

We asked them where they were from, they wouldn't tell us,

except they had this big blue lanyard saying South Thames College.

So after engaging with them, they were really civil, they were really interested, they were interested in what we were doing, why we were out,

they were asking for all sorts of questions, and they dispersed and they went back.

But the initial call that came in was a lot different to what we experienced.

So it's just sometimes people probably have heard something, but these were just school kids or college kids and everything was fine.

But if you're ever in a situation where you feel unsafe pick up the phone, let us know and we'll respond to it

Thank you, well, I think

Probably all of us can say that there's been lots of fantastic sort of updates good news storeys

But I'd like to open the floor to questions, please

You've already had a question so I'm just going to come to you

Go ahead then please sir. I

Hi there, thank you very much.

I mean, I live around the North Coast area

and the first thing I've already picked up here

is that we need a recalibration of A,

what the value of this theft is, the scale of it.

It's belittled almost by saying VW badges.

It's not, it's the highly valuable radar systems

that sit behind and it's not VW,

but it's almost like a cancer in the area.

You can't walk a single street

without there being three or four cars

that have been stripped.

My neighbours have had it happen two, three times

and the regularity of it happening

is within weeks of it being replaced, it's done.

And the replacement cost is 5 ,000 pounds plus

for a lot of vehicles

and these aren't brand new vehicles either.

I've done some basic stats on your stats

which are no doubt underreported

and even at the bottom end,

it's costing residents one and a half million

to upwards of five million pounds a year

based on my calculations against your stats here.

You're saying it's 500 pounds,

that's simply not the case that's probably the retail that's a resale value for the thieves

online which I look at these things. The scale of this theft is like a cancer it's an epidemic you

cannot turn left or right without seeing these vehicles stripped. We know what vehicles are

being targeted I'm certain it's locals because they're almost instantly restolen they're not

coming every few months they're literally there every other day they must just be walking around.

What's being done about this?

I mean, my neighbours, the anxiety it's causing is huge.

And it feels like when the police come

and knock on the door,

they don't even seem to know anything about it.

And these are supposed to be the local police

and I can see it everywhere.

I think you guys really need to rethink

about how big this problem is and the cost of the problem.

Vehicles are gonna become uninsurable.

It's highly concentrated in certain areas. You know, it would be very easy to run trap

operations in those areas because it's literally every other day

Superintendent

Thank you. So with the figures up I gave you the figures that were given to me about the the price

the radar units

At the moment our figures show is VW in the past. It's been other other makes as a DS

It's Audi, it's all of the German vehicles basically.

Let me just finish, please.

So, Sergeant, for that ward and now the Inspector

have approached Mercedes, BMW,

and tried to speak to them to see

what measures can be put in place.

But what's being looked at is on a corporate level

as to what we can do,

because it's not just a North Road issue,

it's a Met -Wide issue.

But these items being stolen, they're not local either,

because we've got information to say otherwise.

So one of the operations that Ali MacPherson was talking about

or referring to is a live operation that's currently running.

But we have run night shifts in and around Northcote,

in and around Ballum, and Ben wants to come in on it

because Ben's team are also working on it.

But it's not... If it's underreported, we'd like to know more

because the more information we get, the more we can deal with it.

So if people are not reporting it for some reason,

then it doesn't help us to get a true picture.

But where it has been reported, we then address it.

If the officers who are attending

are response team colleagues,

they might not necessarily be in on the overall

neighbourhood picture of problem solving or what's happening.

So they put a report on neighbourhood teams and pick it up,

and then we do long -term problem solving in and around that.

But it's not something that's gonna disappear overnight.

The manufacturers need to be involved in it.

I'm told that the new grills that are being fitted

incorporate the badges a lot more robustly,

so it's not as easy to just pull the badge off and go.

So happy to work with you further on it

with Ben and the local inspector.

Thank you, Superintendent.

Marlene, please.

Thank you very much, Chair.

I was invited by the Met to be one of their

community ambassadors for the Notting Hill Carnival

or observing what they were doing.

One of the things that I was quite impressed with

is something called FAS Amnesty, which PJ has seen FAS.

And I would like to ask,

because we've got so much knife crime in the area,

whether we can't have the FAS Amnesty here.

Actually, it's a vehicle where people can come

and put in whatever knives they are.

No questions are asked.

They just drop the knives into the van.

So I would like to give you the information,

and I would like to suggest that the van comes especially around areas like Clapham Junction,

where we have knives there, there's no denying it,

and other areas where there's high crime and knife crime around the Doddington.

So, can I suggest?

Sounds like a very welcome suggestion.

You should share that with us and Lee as well.

Yeah.

Do officers want to say anything in response?

Thank you, Marlene.

If you share the information,

then we'll work with Lee and his team as well

because often knife arch binge.

Yeah, but we'll work with the local authorities as well

to make sure there's a coordinator approach on it.

There's a knife amnesty bill at St. George's Hospital.

I think there's a question from the back row please.

Good evening, sorry, good evening Tony Belton, I'm a Councillor in Battersea Park Ward. I must say

I've got a lot of sympathy for the police, they've got a pretty well impossible job. The gentleman's

just spoken about underrating property problems.

As a counsellor in covering the Doddington

and other large estates in North Battersea,

my biggest fear, biggest concern is the terror

that lots of people, particularly women,

but not just women by any means,

that people are terrified of leaving their house

or they're flat usually, or having visitors.

One particular thing that's happening at the moment

at the end of Charlotte Despard Avenue,

at the cul -de -sac end,

is there's an almost nightly rave going on

with illegal gambling, large numbers of people,

largely young of course, making an incredible noise

and people not being able to sleep.

what's the police attitude about actually coming out

onto the council estates at night?

Because sometimes as a councillor,

you get the impression that the council estates are,

that's the council's problem,

and then the council say, no, it's the police's problem.

And as a councillor, I can never sort out which is which.

Like to have a bit more clarification about that.

Chief Inspector.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for that question.

much appreciated. So in relation to that, our safe neighbourhood teams have already

worked to a certain time over the weekend, it's normally about 2 o 'clock in the morning.

However we have got response teams which will work 24 -7 and as Mr Bajan has already mentioned

that it's extremely busy out there. However, if there are offences and you have got any

social behaviour and it's reported it will get triaged, our met call centre, so our first

contact, they will review the call and if required they will send it out to a local

team to actually come out and actually deal with it. But we are seeing a lot of under -reporting

at the moment. We were down earlier on today with a local MP down at Patmore Estate this morning,

having a conversation with a number of people down there. And they're mentioning a number of

ASB, but it's not being reported to us. It just needs to be reported to us more. So I'm unaware

of the area myself. I used to be the Inspector for Battersea, all right, of any ASB down there.

I'm sure that may have changed. I've been acting up since April, all right, but I'll have to speak to local teams.

But rest assured, if there are offences occurring, we will attend there and then. That would be our colleagues from Response Team.

We do take ASB extremely seriously. If it's personal, if it's ASB

like noise complaints, etc., that technically falls to the council.

But if it's personal, then it would fall to us to deal. But we do take it seriously, so rest assured to that.

Councillor, if I can just jump in as well on that point.

So if there is a rave or anything like that going along,

we've got powers to shut those raves down,

we've got powers to have dispersal notices put in place,

and we had something in Garrett Lane last week

where again, powers were put in place

by the night duty superintendent to go in

and close the rave that was taking place.

So the key here, and with a lot of things,

is a lot of people report it in social media

or apps amongst themselves.

They all talk about it, but very few of them will report it.

They'll message the MP, they'll message the councillors.

And this was the theme today from Marcia de Codeva

and the councillor who came with us.

The councillors are repeatedly telling the residents

to report it to police.

So unless we hear about it, we don't know about it.

So my advice would be if you're speaking to anyone,

please ask them to report it to us,

and we'll be able to decide.

Is it something that police deal with,

or is it something that council deal with?

My suspicion, if I may, my suspicion is that, as from today,

if this amazing summer has broken,

the raves will not be quite so frequent in the pouring rain

where they happen.

So thank the weather for one thing at least.

Please.

Good evening.

I'm just a member of the public.

I'm not a counsellor or a,

coming from a group or anything.

I've come here on behalf of my sister,

who was actually knocked down by an electric bike

in Tooting Broadway in July,

and we had to witness CCTV.

CCTV. She ended up with stitches in the back of her head and in her back. She previously

had spinal surgery and a knee surgery. And we seem to be going round and round in circles.

I don't want to waste everyone else's time. Equally, we had a cannabis factory in the

house next door to her that I had lots of information that was never followed up on.

So I'd really appreciate the chance to speak to Inspector MacPherson at a later date. I'd

I'd really appreciate that if I could get together with you

because I've got to leave due to caring issues.

I've got to get back to home to look after her,

but I'd really appreciate speaking to you about it, sir.

I do realise it's not an issue solely for tooting

or one's worth, it's all over the place,

but it's quite personal.

Thank you, I think you've got everyone's sympathies here

and the inspectors totally up for meeting afterwards

or at another point, convenient.

Are there any more questions?

Hi. I just want to ask a question.

I'm a neighbourhood watch coordinator in Crestway,

that is in West Putney.

And we have a group of youth, usually on electric bikes,

who dismount their bikes and they usually gather around the hospital gate and an alleyway.

They are usually all gathered there with balaclavas, blue gloves, chatting, smoking,

and a lot of our residents feel quite intimidated. They haven't actually done anything to them.

They're just hanging around and they feel intimidated because that's our only way to

cross over to go to Roehampton Lane.

Is something like that, I mean, can you report it?

I mean, once I kind of challenged one of the young, the youth, these are like 15 to 17

year olds and he said to me, you know, why you got a problem with us standing here, you

know?

And I suppose it is fashionable, I don't know.

So is that something that I would have often wondered?

Do I report that?

What will come of it?

They have not actually committed a crime, but I know my neighbour's daughter, she's

afraid of letting them walk through there.

People feel a little bit vulnerable.

Thank you.

Inspector James.

Yeah, please report it to us.

Report it to your local team.

West Putney, just West Putney, Roehampton, on that bit there.

I slightly missed the location, but please report it to the teams.

I'll speak to them when I see them as well.

And we can just go and do some patrols and just go and see what they're doing.

Like you say, they may be doing nothing, but they may be doing something.

But, yeah, it's something we can certainly come and look at.

There's no problem at all.

Councillor Graham.

Thank you, Chair.

I really do support amnesty bins.

I really do, and I think we should look at the strategy

of how we can have it in strategic places.

I know there was also quite a lot of sensitivity on having them.

And as St. George's, they do have one, but I really do support that.

It's very distressing to hear the experience of that lady

intuiting Broadway and yourself with the e -bikes.

And I'm so glad for Putney that they had this e -bike ASB,

you know, crime attack, to get all those bikes.

But can I look at Inspector McPherson?

Could we please bring it to Tooting?

I really, but my next question at last, so you can tie it up,

is the fact that with the car recognitions,

I do know that on the big motorways,

when they're looking at AP, whatever it is,

The actual registrations are not very clear and they're actually getting quite a lot of people who could be caught for being speeding,

but the actual registration or how it's being made makes it very, very difficult to actually apprehend and see so that there could be a ticket.

And I don't know, have we actually heard of that yet here?

It was on the news, of course, but I think that that is,

and there were an awful lot of people

who'd really got fingers about,

but they got through, luckily for them, but not for me.

Superintendent, I think there's a fantastic recommendation

or suggestion from Marlene earlier over the amnesty bins.

Is it an action we can take away to review?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm not sure whether you want to mention anything on the bikes or the A &P, what would you call it, masking?

No, I'm only requesting, please, could we have it in Tooting, because we've heard,

and especially Garrett Lane is evil, because they just go down there and they couldn't toss about traffic lights.

Can I just say, Charles, it's not a bin, it's a vehicle. It's an actual vehicle that's well,

you know, sealed up, a proper sealed up vehicle. They've got trays as big as this that you

can put a knife as long as that straight into it.

It's probably good though, it can be used all around the borough, so good thing. I think

Councillor Doube had a question.

Oh, it's just a very quick one.

So referring to page 29 on the document,

so in part, the officers have arrested

over 90 people this year,

compared to just three for the whole of 2025.

So what changed to drive this dramatic increase?

Just wondering.

I'm going to say I took over, which I did,

but I'm not going to take the credit here, by the way.

There were some staffing issues there last year

that were addressed, actually by myself and Mr Arjan,

at the end of last year.

And also, to be honest, the main driver has been new staff

and new sergeants, not all of them, but they've come in,

brought different skill sets in,

slightly different proactive attitudes.

But it is a change in the met as well,

the commissioner, it's come really from the top as well

around getting out there.

I know it sounds really stupid,

we should be arresting people,

and that sounds, I'm not trying to belittle it,

and of course we should be doing it,

but you need the right people,

and it was just getting the right people into the area

to support the partner, because it was being,

the staffing, it was being done in Battersea

and tooting, so it was just a bit of a change around in some of the staffing. Yes, I lead

it and I'll take the praise, but it's not me, I'm not out there really, it's my staff,

it's my sergeants and my PCs, and that's really where the changes come about.

Thank you. Councillor.

Thank you, Chair. Just a very quick question to the Inspector and all the Superintendents.

The new Crime and Policing Act has been signed off

and received for a sense,

and it's given you expanded powers, I believe,

from what I've seen so far.

I was just wondering how that's gonna affect local policing

or the way SNT operates on the day -to -day level.

So with the investment of the officers

from the local authority,

our approach is still crime fighting.

there's going to be very little change in our daily approach,

but we will use what the Act has, the civil remedies,

and we continue to do enforcement work in and around CBOs,

domestic violence protection notices and orders,

and I can give you a whole list of examples,

and that's a sort of proactive approach that we're taking,

and I said earlier, the day of neighbourhoods going back

10 years has just changed so dramatically

and certainly in the last, say, three to five years.

We're having to work a lot smarter.

The Met has lost in the region of about 3 ,000 posts,

police officers and staff.

We're gonna lose another 1 ,000 over this year

and probably the same amount next year due to funding cuts.

So there'll be a lot of things that we don't do,

but we have to work smarter in how we're delivering that

because our main goal is public safety

and making sure that everyone's safe.

Thank you. I think we've got time for two more questions.

I'm just quickly asking Jan, you were monitoring for any online questions.

Have any come through, please?

No, none at all.

We have had one comment from Les McDonald,

who sadly had to leave at 8 o 'clock,

but the meeting so far has been of the highest standard.

Well done, Charles, he says.

Ladies, please. Nearest first.

Hi, can you hear me? Thank you.

Councillor Cook, Wandsworth Town.

Just a quick note to say that we will be holding a silent walk against knife crime on the 29th of October.

I'd really welcome a talk with officers about the vehicle that Marlene has mentioned

and perhaps getting that deployed on the day is the potential. Thank you.

And please at the back.

Yes, hello, thank you very much. Just real quick.

HMP Wandsworth progression model,

are there any specific measurements in place

and how do you keep track of the early released prisoners

if you're allowed to tell, if you can tell?

Thank you.

So thank you for raising that.

We have an integrated offender team at Wandsworth.

They look at all of the offenders

and we look at them as to who's high harm,

who's high risk. So with the recent changes we had a letter from

probation service that came through to us and the implication was that

neighbourhoods would pick up those who didn't fall into the IOM model or the

serious offender but for us it's a question of where's the governance

coming from because if you start breaking that across four neighbourhoods

the four boroughs are we going to miss something through in the crack so what

what I've done is spoken with the CID department

that deals with it, and the process is they will pick up

any notifications that come through,

and we've got the Community Safety Partnership next week,

so that's a topic for us to pick up.

I've also escalated it through the MET

to sort of say, look, this has come through,

are you aware of it?

And Commander Patel, who heads neighbourhoods policing,

has acknowledged receipt of that,

and is escalating it even further within the MET

so that at corporate level,

there is a joined up piece of work that we're not missing anything because I'd

hate to sort of not pick up on something because we're not around and that sort

of slips through because anyone who's released who's been in prison will pose

some sort of a risk and it's just being able to manage that.

Thank you.

Is there one last question we can take from the field?

Go on Councillor Henderson please.

Thanks. Since there was a presentation on cooking, do you have community safety or indeed

the police have any feel for the extent of cooking in the borough? Is it focused upon

on particular hotspots, areas, wards, et cetera.

And in particular, do the police have any sort

of specialist functions or officers who deal with cuckooing?

And how will that actually work

in conjunction with community safety?

Thank you.

Victoria, are you able to answer that or?

Inspector General.

I think you've asked it my way, Councillor.

So it's our local neighbourhood teams

that deal with the cuckooing.

We work alongside Project Adder.

They are southwest officers

that are attached to Project Adder.

They do a lot of the work in the background

around the analysis and data,

try and find out the properties that are being cuckooed.

It is a working process.

I would say it's really under -reported,

and that's why with Victoria,

we started up this monthly group

to actually specifically look at cuckooing

because we know it's really under -reported at the moment.

Sorry, very quickly.

What advice would you give to ward panels

in terms of how they can help identify cooking incidences?

I think probably the simplest is,

I think one of the main indicators is you get premises

and you get lots of people to -ing and fro -ing from it,

which probably normally may indicate drug dealing,

but often if you're in your community,

you probably know the person that may live there,

and when you see these people,

they're not really the type of people

they would be associating with.

Report it to us, and then we will come

and investigate along with the council.

And just on that note, obviously people may be scared

to report and give statements,

because obviously it could be gangs,

but with cuckooing under that piece of legislation

for closure orders, we can use hearsay evidence.

So we've got that from a lot from a property

in Wandsworth town actually recently,

so people can give us those statements,

the judge will hear it and take it

as though it's being given in person by that resident,

but obviously there's none of their details on there at all.

So that's something really important for people

to understand that we can use it

completely anonymously in court.

Really great question, thank you, Councillor.

So noting the time and people have got lives

and families to get home to,

I'd like to sort of sum up by sort of saying

I think there's some really great work happening

across community safety and policing.

So it's another thanks, whether it's improving ASP

around hotspots, neighbourhood policing operations,

some of these knife crime and vehicle results

as outstanding, and sometimes policing

can be a thankless task.

So I think it's a pat on the back and a pat on the shoulder

for all of them really, from my perspective.

Clearly there's still work to do from an e -bikes perspective, knives, VW badges and radars

and cars and things, but it's going in the right direction, even though there's cost

savings being made across the Met, etc.

So it's a thank you on that front.

I've got to give a little promo for ward panels.

Many of you are already on ward panels,

but if you'd like to take part,

normally on a quarterly basis in your ward,

people get together, meet with their sergeant

and local police officers

to discuss safer neighbours issues.

So we've got a few vacancies for ward chairs

across the borough, but if you'd like to get involved,

please grab me or grab your local

Safer Neighbourhood's Officer at a time that suits because we always welcome any of the

residents no matter where you're from and we can really work with the timings because

everyone has a life to live etc. So that was that point. I've been told to remind everyone

or let everyone know the date for the next closed Safer Neighbourhood board meeting is

different to the date that's on the agenda pack.

The next date is on Wednesday, the ninth of December.

So a week or so before Christmas and things.

And I'm hoping that Inspector McPherson will have some great

more storeys to tell us then.

I'd like to thank you all, especially the residents for coming along.

The success of tonight isn't measured by how many presentations we get

or the numbers of questions we've got.

I think it's where the residents feel they're being listened to and it's sort of sinking in and I certainly got that sense

sitting here today

So all I can say is thank you and have a safe journey home

Thank you.

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Safer Neighbourhood BoardWednesday, 7th October 2026 at 6:30pm

Safer Neighbourhood Board
Wednesday, 7th October 2026 at 6:30pm