Safer Neighbourhood Board - Tuesday 8 October 2024, 6:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Safer Neighbourhood Board
Tuesday, 8th October 2024 at 6:30pm 

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Thank you.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Democratic services via Councillor Gilbert has dealt with the matter, I believe. Is that
correct, Leigh? Thank you. Live facial recognition presentation, we have one this evening, so
let's leave that one for the moment. Questions for the superintendent. Written answers were
were submitted and the pro forma project for the board
to be circulated via email to the board
and with the final list and that was circulated
but there will be a few words on that one this evening.
Thank you.
Can we now go on to the first item on the agenda
which is the data pack and over to Inspector Pinson.
Are you doing that?
No, no, sorry.
Thank you, Chair. I'm James Griffin. I'm one of the three police inspectors for Wandsworth.
I cover the Tooting, a cluster of seven wards in Tooting, and Chris here covers Battersea
and Steve. To my left covers Putney, just so you know who we are. Is there a PowerPoint
coming up, Callum?
Sorry about that.
We're gonna be looking at the,
it's in the pack for this evening,
what I'm about to talk about.
What I'm just gonna mention briefly,
just if that may appear on the screen,
it may just be in the pack in front of you,
is some of the main crime types that affect,
you know, residents in the neighborhoods.
that's the one. Burglary robbery, theft from person, so that's things like pickpocketing
or snatching. Sexual offences, theft from a motor vehicle and theft of a motor vehicle.
There we are, thank you, sorry can. So you'll see from the data yourself, you can pour over
it in your own time, I'm happy to take some questions in a minute.
You'll see burglary there. The figures you're looking at is 12 months
from September 23 to the end of August 2024, and the percentage comparison,
so for burglary where it says down 8 .8%, that's compared to the same
12 months from September 22 to August 23.
So you'll see there that burglary has gone down. This is for the
Whole of Wandsworth, obviously.
Burglary, robbery has gone up.
Theft from person has gone up, also.
Whereas sexual offenses, theft from motor vehicle
and theft of motor vehicle have gone down.
All these figures, I know lots of you like to look at data.
The way that the Met has been collecting crime data
changed in April this year with the advent
of some new computer software called Connect.
So there's one or two minor discrepancies which I'm not an expert in, but in terms of
where you get your sources of data, these things might be miles out, but if you were
to look at last year, they might be slightly different in the way MOPAC counts crimes,
just based on the software we use and the boxes officers tick when they're reporting
crimes.
But essentially they're the figures for the 12 months to the end of August this year.
Chair, would you like me just to go through the slides?
Yeah, can I have the next slide then?
This slide here briefly just shows a kind of more recent trend of those same offenses.
So I'm looking at the spring into the summer here, so March to May and June to August.
So you'll see, for example, burglary, there were 408 burglaries in the borough between March and May,
and that rose to 454, hence it being in red for the summer period.
And as you can see, those other figures there have increased on robbery,
theft from the person and sexual offences ever so slightly.
Whereas theft from motor vehicle and theft of motor vehicle have both reduced.
There may be some around the theft from motor vehicle,
there was a bit of a spate of Volkswagen badges being nicked from cars
without wishing to be too blunt.
Eventually, of course, so many have been stolen that a thief will go elsewhere.
I apologize, I can't get much nearer. I will speak slower perhaps. Sorry about that.
Next slide please Chris. There's only five or six slides, don't worry.
It's just a brief note around hate crime recordings between the same period,
so September 23 to the end of August 24. The counting methodology has changed
because of the computer software I mentioned earlier around
we're now more accurate with the types of hate crime recorded.
Of course, you can see here there's only four, I've only used four main categories
just to show the kind of numbers of figures of people who report hate crime.
Of course, we urge people to report hate crime of any description.
And they're just the figures.
There's no point in comparing to the year before, as I say,
because the way it's counted would make it look,
it wouldn't give a useful comparison.
Next slide, please.
Okay, so moving on to stop and search.
In the borough of Wandsworth, from the 10th of September,
23 to the 9th of September, 24,
there were 3 ,298 stop searches conducted
and 29 .2 % of those resulted in a positive sanction, i .e. the item or the thing
officers were looking for was found. And then the next slide will show you then
what happened to those, the people. Out of all the people, officers in Wandsworth
stopped searched, 15 .8 % of them were under 18 years of age and
8 .3 % of them were female. Just to give you a sense of who
offers as a searching, there's far more detail on stop search
on the source there if anyone wishes to look. Next, please.
More on stop search, I thought this would be a useful figure
to look at, just the racial code mentioned at the time of the search.
You'll see the data there. 1 .3 % of people, sorry, 1 .1 % of people, my eyes,
didn't state their code. And we used, officers used body worn camera 98 .1 % of
the time. Obviously we're always looking to hit the 100 % mark on that and there
may be some reasons battery had died at the time, I could tell you exactly why,
but there are one or two fairly understandable reasons why body worn
camera may not have been utilized at the time. Perhaps officers were off duty on
their way back to the station and wouldn't have had their camera with them,
but obviously some of you may be involved in scrutinizing stop search and
and we'll have had the chance to see a random selection of stop searches
through the eyes of the officer's body worn camera.
And final slide.
The result of stop searches, as mentioned earlier,
29 % resulted in something being found.
538 people were arrested directly as a result of stop search.
13 were cautioned.
319 were given a community resolution which may be, for example, cannabis the first time
you're found with cannabis, you may just be given a community resolution, i .e. you're
aware this is an offence, you could receive a criminal record, so this is a kind of shot
across the bow warning not to do that again. And there's other things like penalty notice
for disorder, fixed bounty notice or summons. And 2 ,334 people who were searched, there
was no further actions taken, i .e. nothing was found. That's all in terms of data,
Chair, if there's any, I don't know if anyone has any questions.
Does anyone have any questions? Jan.
Thank you. Data very clear. I do just wonder though, we previously used to see
comparison figures with other boroughs in London. Is there any plan to move back
to that?
Yeah, apologies. I presented what I was asked to, but if you're interested, then
I know it's something you'll have to do yourself, but the link there is actually
quite usable to click. I appreciate it would have been perhaps useful to look at
Amber, Thormerton, or whichever borough you would choose to compare with.
Previously, were those statistics provided by the police or was there some council input
to giving us the comparison figures?
Thank you, Marlene.
Just on the burglary figures, we've obviously just gone through a phase of having a number
of people released from Wandsworth prison amongst other prisons, and I just wondered
whether there were any burglars amongst those who've been released that might have an impact
that is the opposite of the decrease that we can see here, down 8 .8 % in the 12 months
from September 23 to August 24. Obviously that would not be a welcome development, but
I'm guessing that might be a potential development.
I think you'd be right. I wouldn't be able to say a comment precisely on which burglaries
had occurred by who.
Lee was going to have a word on the part of your presentation.
I can cover that later. It's one of the agenda items, so I'll cover that off then.
Thank you, Chair.
In the past, we actually did have the comparisons from other boroughs.
So how on earth can we now compare with other boroughs?
because I really think that would help the police, that would help community safety,
and that would reassure us as we have a commitment to the awareness of other issues in other
boroughs. And I think that would be information which I think all would benefit, but I may
speak on my own, but would other people support that?
So, anyway, I feel quite strongly about that, having had that
experience before, and I really do think those who really are
interested in this crime and reduction of crime would really
enjoy that benefit of the information.
Thank you, Chair.
May I?
Good evening, everyone.
I am Superintendent Rajan.
I'm the head of Wandsworth Neighbourhoods, covering the whole borough.
So just to catch up on that question, we've gone through some restructuring and some staffing
issues around the Intelligence Unit and the analysts, so it's something we can take back,
but even some of the analytical work that we need to do for our own crime fighting is
left down to our staff to do.
So, anything that you need, like these figures, whilst we get the broad brush figures, the
real analytics around it has to be done at the local level.
So that sort of data can be presented at the local ward meetings and, you know, it's
something we will look at, whereas previously the way it was set up and the systems that
were used were able to provide better, broader figures for us to compare from.
Just to come back on that same point, one of the purposes of this board is to work with
our local police but also to hold them accountable on performance. Without that comparison, we
find it very difficult to look at performance issues. Are we doing better or worse than
comparable borrowers around. So whether it is an issue for the police to produce it or
from within the board's own resources, I don't know. Previously we had them, but I don't
think we can fulfil our function as a board in holding you to account without that comparison.
Thank you.
Can you, Chair, may I just come back on that one?
Oh, sorry. Hold.
So what I'll do is I'll take it away, we'll see what we can and for the purpose of this
meeting whilst we haven't got that to hand we could perhaps supply that so it's part
of the information pack for you.
I'm slightly surprised that people don't know there is this thing called the stop and search
dashboard which is published every month and provides a plethora of data which is comparisons
between the boroughs. In fact everything we've been asking for comparisons over
time. It's accessible to everybody it's not just accessible to either police or
ourselves in the stop and search side of things. Anyone can look at it and
interrogate it.
Sorry I was told. Thank you Andy but there is a link there on the
on the presentation, so you're welcome to just press on the link on the presentation,
you'll be able to see it, or copy it and paste it onto an internet. Thank you. Hari.
Hari Gunawardana, Savanna State. Now, we have got an S &T group, Shaftesbury and Queenstown S &T,
which has been operating for a number of years and we meet about two or three times a month.
It all depends and it's actually, there are three or four police officers also in
attendance.
We find that it's very effective because a smaller group can actually speak out and
get some sort of help.
Now, what I want to know, how is the SNT,
South Korea, Queensland, fit in here?
Because this is a big organization.
So can somebody explain?
Harry, can you turn your mic off please?
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Your S &P Chair, who is, Jan, can you remind me of the,
your S &P Chair is a board member.
All the ward chairs are board members
and they report back to us.
Go ahead, Harry.
I am also co -chair of the SNT. I chair the meeting in September. So we find that it is
very effective. So I just want to know how does that come, how do we fit in here? Because
we find that it is very easy for us to contact the team that actually attend the meetings
very often.
Can you switch your mic off please? As I said, Harry, your chair is a board member and comes
to these meetings and report back to these meetings. So I suggest, if I may, have a word
with your chair about it. Thank you.
I don't know if I'm misunderstanding the question.
What I would say is so Shaftesbury and Queenstown is one of my wards.
I have eight wards in the Battersea Cluster and so the officers that come to you are my
officers and they will feed in through their sergeant to me around war priorities and things
like that as will the other eight and we, so that feed up comes up through the police
side that way and then into Mr Rajan who the three of us essentially report into. So the whole of the
borough's wards and their issues feed up to Mr Rajan. I'm not sure if that's similar to the
question you are, helps with the question or not but um.
Sorry, Trevor Hutton, Becklands Road, furs down. We were told over a year ago that the
data would be far more easily accessible and that it would be simple to actually extract
data from that for our wards. That doesn't seem to have happened and we've only just
received data for the last four months that the system had blocked. Is that going to be
improved and people be able to extract their own data rather than relying on data from
up on high, so to speak?
So there has been a transition from the old system to the new.
The publicly accessible data I'm not sure is fully up to date at the moment,
because I think there have been a few issues in bringing it through.
We are getting the data, but I don't think it's all necessarily translating into public forum at the moment.
I think James the data you actually presented today is publicly available, isn't it?
Yes, it's all publicly available
But I'll take your point about ward level
Because I couldn't find the ward level detail on publicly available systems. Obviously we have it in -house. Yeah
Harry, can you be rather quick, we need to go on to the next item, thank you.
My question has not been properly answered because we are in a group which has been operating
for several years and it works properly, but now how are we associated with this? That's
my question.
Jan.
I think Harry started by saying he's co -chair.
We only have one chair listed, so Harry hasn't been clearly
receiving the minutes and information that sends out,
so perhaps if we amend our records,
it will be easier to bring Harry on board with how
the structure works.
Yeah, we can, but there should only be one member attending.
There should only be one board member, not two.
Thank you. Can we go, sorry, we take that offline, thank you. Can we go on to the next
item please, which is the live facial recognition presentation. Thank you.
Sorry, I'm just trying to share my screen as well.
Excellent.
Excellent. My name is Chris Pinson. I am the inspector for Battersea Sector. I work alongside
James and Steve, as James said earlier. As you can see, we have started trialing live
facial recognition on the borough. Actually, if we start with the presentation, if you
look at the slides there, that is actually an example of an operation taking place outside
Clapham Junction station and you can take in the signs are actually what goes
up on the lamp posts etc around the site so just to give you that insight now
because obviously I go into it a bit further later on and the van you see in
the background of the left -hand picture is actually the van with the cameras on
it so we're not using just to clarify we don't use the local or the
or the council CCTV cameras.
They're not there all the time.
We don't tee into them.
This is specific cameras on a specific vehicle
that moves around the Metropolitan Police,
essentially at the moment,
and is deployed to certain areas.
So how is facial recognition used in policing?
Essentially, there's full details on the link up there
if you wish to take it down.
And it's on the website as well.
But it can be used in a number of ways.
We use it essentially to prevent and detect crime.
That's what it's about.
Trying to safeguard vulnerable people
and to protect people from harm.
Essentially to keep everyone here and in London safe.
And so we use it at this time,
first of all as a real time aid
to help officers locate people on a watch list,
so who are sought by the police.
so our wanted offenders or people that maybe are under license for one reason or another,
some sort of order of a court.
But also we use it as a retrospective system after an event to help identify people
and whether their image matches other media on databases.
But the main way we're using it on Wandsworth Borough at the moment is the active deployments,
the first one we're talking about there.
So, to give you a little bit around the background on live facial recognition and the technology
around it, we have trialled it with South Wales Police and that's working alongside
the National Physical Laboratory, which as you can see there is a world leading centre
of excellence.
And that's to get it to the, this has been in development for a number of years and essentially
trying to get it to the right level that it has value, is accurate, and works effectively.
There's previous testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and it essentially
uses an algorithm to identify characteristics of a face to compare that with people on a
own database.
And as you can see, the testing plan was designed to identify
any impact it could have on protected characteristics, in
particular race, age, and gender.
So in terms of our deployments, it works by the cameras on that
vehicle that you saw at the start will be focused in a
particular area.
The vehicle will be deployed to a specific area and the cameras
are focused in small areas, it's not like a wide beam camera, it has to be focused into
a very tight area. And those images, as people walk through, are live streamed to the facial
recognition system and essentially compared in a matter of milliseconds against a database
that we have. So the watch list, this is, so for example to give you a reference point
on the last one that I did, the watch list was of about 14 ,000 people. It's not
everyone the police have ever come into contact with or had an image of, it is purely wanted
offenders, people under license, some sort of order from the court for example, and that list
is updated on the morning of every deployment, basically straight before it happens. Because
obviously we don't want to be arresting people that have been arrested the night before or
whatever else it may be. So the image is taken, compared against the watchlist, if it flags
up to us to the requisite level, then that sends a notification through to the officers
deployed around the vehicle who are all in uniform and they will then spot
that person and go and engage with them. It's not an end point I think is the
first thing to say. It's a starting point in that engagement. You know people
don't get arrested straight away or anything like that. It's very much go and
go and speak to the person, find out what's going on. You have to verify the
the identification, etc., etc., and do a number of checks.
As I've already said in the last line there, it's not using lots and lots of different CCTV cameras.
This is deployed overt policing tactic to help locate limited people.
It's not utilized for everyone else.
So, for example, if you walk through the camera,
it takes your image, and your image is not on the watch list,
it is deleted straight away.
We do not retain the information.
The only information that is retained
is if we get a positive identification,
that image is retained for 31 days
in case it gets challenged in court, for example,
if the identification itself is challenged
by the person who is engaged with.
So in terms of how we decide where we deploy live facial recognition,
essentially it's utilizing data of high harm crime,
particularly violence against women and girls, and knife crime.
And also we do consult with partners in the community around it.
For example, a colleague of mine presented to the independent advisory group last month.
Marlene's been down to it as I think Sean has as well.
So it's very much an open thing. We do are very welcoming.
If people from the community want to come down,
or if you see it going on, please do come and speak to us
because we are happy to talk about the process and what goes on.
Try and demystify it a little bit.
As you can see, the second question, if you're in an area,
it's pretty overt. I mean, the van there is great.
Anyway, the other van that we had on the deployment I had is bright red.
It's a great big van, stood on the pavement, and there are signs within probably the surrounding
20 plus meters, and people, to answer the next question, people are not funneled into
it.
There are opportunities.
If people don't want to go through it, they don't have to.
They can cross the road.
They can go wherever they wish.
essentially people are not corralled towards it or anything like that.
And then yeah, I've already answered the fourth bit here in relation to retention.
So in terms of results on Wandsworth Borough, we've had eight deployments in Wandsworth,
three of which have been outside Clapham Junction and five in Tooting Broadway.
Last two were at the end of September and we should have another one coming up fairly soon.
And then between, as you can see, in terms of results,
we've had 31 arrests.
Every single one of those has been
a positive identification, i .e.
the system has flagged them to us, we have engaged,
and they have been confirmed to be the same person
it was thought to be.
And as you can see, one of those subjects
have been wanted for 13 years.
I can certainly say from my experience of it,
there's no way I would have recognized one of the people who was identified and
stopped and spoken to. That was only two years later but they had visibly changed
so much that it was very hard, you know, without seeing it you wouldn't
know. So the system is, from my point of view, quite impressive in terms of what
it does. It will pick up from a cap or a hood, it will still pick
up if it sees a significant portion of the face. It's quite impressive. So from my point
of view at least. And as you can see, there's been another 38 interactions with people on
top of that. So that's an identification, but some that isn't wanted. It's those orders
from the court that I was talking to you about and referring to. That could be for any number
of things, they may be on license, etc. So, as you can see, in terms of comparisons
with other areas where it's been deployed, very similar numbers to Croydon that have
had the deployments and actually it's some of the highest activations the system has
had within the Metropolitan Police area. As I've referred to, the last ones were in September
And it's also been deployed not just in Wandsworth,
but in Kingston.
And there are other locations being considered
by the team that run it.
And I think that is the end of my presentation.
Thank you, Chris.
Does anyone have any questions?
Thanks.
One of the issues that came up when this was first
being muted as a new form of technology to help police fight crime, when I think it was
being tested out, was that there was an issue with the system not really differentiating
between certain groups of people. So for example, it seemed to be better at doing facial recognition
of white people than it was of black people, just to put that out there. And I just wondered,
can you guarantee that the system has now improved beyond that point? I know that that
was something that was a and that clearly would be completely insupportable for us to
be going ahead with that as an ongoing problem so I hope you are going to reassure me that
that has been completely resolved. Thank you.
I can certainly assure you that that's not something I'm aware of. I've been assured
that it doesn't matter gender, ethnicity, etc, etc. The system works to the same level regardless.
That's my understanding certainly. I don't think we'd be utilizing it otherwise from a policing
point of view these days. I'd like to think not certainly.
Angela.
.
It's really, as I referred to in the presentation, it's around crime rates, high harm offenders,
and particularly knife crime and violence against women and girls at this time.
But we're also guided by the team that are out there doing it every day.
As a borough, we are only doing it once or twice, well, maybe not even once or twice
a month, the team who are out every day are learning, I think, every day and taking that
learning back on how effective they can be. So we will work with them very closely around
where we feel it should be deployed and them about how it can be effectively deployed because
not all locations are suitable.
The police said that how interesting and fantastic it was because you did Clanton Junction as
well as Tooting Broadway.
So it must give a job satisfaction in a way that these guys who have been nicking bikes
and doing whatever can get caught quicker.
So thank you.
If I just come back to your question as to how do we pick locations. So we will tell
the team where we want to deploy or consider deployment. So the team then look at why we
want to deploy. So they sort of triage what our requests are. They then go and scope out
the site, look at the footfall, the area and they've got their own criteria that they
then assess our request again. So just to give you an idea around Clapham Junction,
we don't do the back end of Clapham Junction because that borders onto Falconbrook as a
ward. We do the main High Street because that again is more general transient population.
So the people on the other side who are local residents don't feel like it's been set
there to target them. There are a lot of community impact considerations that go into that. The
deployments are really successful and I am sure in time the capacity and scope will increase.
It is a really valuable tool for us and the other boroughs.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councillor.
Thank you, Councillor Sean Lawless from Two Team Broadway.
Thank you so much for what you've done
in Two Team Broadway team,
and thanks for being so approachable, I think,
with people coming up to you.
I came and spoke to you with members of the MP's office
a couple of times, and you showed us sort of how it works.
One of the questions I was gonna ask is,
and it may be anecdotal rather than statistical,
but what happens to crime in the sort of surrounding area
when this is taking place?
Because I imagine one of the impacts
that hopefully this has is it also deters people
who might cause trouble from the area.
I think that's a really good point.
Thank you for that, Councillor.
And something I should have referred to
in the presentation actually.
So it's quite a fairly resource -intensive tool.
We have between five and 10 probably officers
on each deployment, shall we say,
because actually every arrest requires enough people
to continue it while that person is dealt with in custody.
And obviously you don't want to have to stop
after one person.
In terms of that though,
that means that we will have officers
near the van itself and the site,
but generally we'll also have officers probably across the road
and at key points locally, which means you do get,
when we deploy, it's a very visible presence
both there and in the surrounding location.
So, and actually what we found is they are,
so they're visible, therefore we get people from shops coming up
and saying, oh, I've had no shoplifting today,
or a bar saying there have been no issues,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So there is a knock -on effect, which I think is really positive as well around it,
because obviously it's only that day, but you get a really positive feel
because of that effect of that visibility of police officers.
And actually what we found is that continues for the following few days
because it deters people on a slightly longer period because they've seen the police.
They're all, I'll go somewhere else, for example.
So there is benefits to it definitely in that side of things as well.
Jan.
Thank you. You referred to the team running each session.
Clearly the offices around are from our local resources.
Is it a specialist team in the van handling the cameras?
And you also referred to comparisons, other comparisons in the BCU.
Again, in the wider MET, are our rates comparable?
I'm assuming this is being used throughout the metropolitan area.
Yes, is I think the simple answer to probably both of those questions.
So, it is a specialist team in the vehicle, should we say,
because it requires a certain amount of use of the technology, etc., etc.
The officers around it are your local officers generally.
which I think is good as well because we know people as well,
so it's quite useful, but also it's quite a good way to get our
officers engaging with other tools that the Met can use, I think.
So yes, it is a specialist team, and that is their pretty much sole
role at the moment.
They will be going from site to site to site across the whole MPS,
or certainly a proportion of it, depending on how many teams there are.
The second question, I've got to remember now having answered it, I'm sorry.
Yes, oh yeah, the comparisons. So I think I referred to it in the presentation.
We compare with Croydon and we're both fairly high in terms of positive results.
We're pretty much at the top of the map in terms of positive results.
yeah, but as I say it's also being deployed in Kingston as well to other
local boroughs as well.
Any more questions? No? Oh Andy. Thank you, just seems to be the key to the thing is
getting on the list or not getting on the list, could you just elaborate a bit
more as how who gets on the list and how? I mean I understand the statutory ones
people wanted for courts and you know out of warrants and all those things.
What about suspicions of things?
No, unless you're circulated as wanted on the police national computer you wouldn't be on,
sorry you I shouldn't use that word, but the person would not be on there. If they are just
reported as a potential suspect in a crime that's not high enough as a level of, it would need to
actually circulated because unfortunately we do get allegations of
crimes made obviously against people and people are named but we do have to
investigate them in the first instance don't we so rather than just assume that
they should be arrested etc etc so they have to it there's a threshold that has
to be met and that threshold is that circulation on the police national
computer
thank you can we go on to the next presentation which is stronger and safer
communities and it's Lee.
This is actually telling you what Wandsworth Council is doing towards making the whole
of Wandsworth safer and stronger.
Thank you. Hi everyone, I'm Lee Spooner, Community Safety Team Manager at the Council. What that
is that I manage our seven community safety officers
across the borough.
Each community safety officer covers
three to five wards on average.
What I'm gonna talk through is
what antisocial behavior is, first of all,
some of the tools and powers available
to deal with antisocial behavior,
and then a case study of what we've done
as a partnership in a particular area
to respond to crime and ASB.
Right, so first of all, what is antisocial behaviour?
So there's a couple of different elements to this.
There's the standard definition that is conduct
that is likely to cause harassment, alarm,
or distress to any person.
But then you have the housing aspects there as well.
So you've got the nuisance or annoyance to a person
in relation to their residential premises.
Then you've got how simulating nuisance or annoyance to any person.
That could be, for example, noise related antisocial behaviour.
Bear with me, my screen is frozen.
I'm just going to stop sharing and then come back in. It seems to have frozen.
Okay, so some of the categories of antisocial behavior.
So you've got antisocial behavior can be quite subjective and it's broken into various different
categories as well.
So you've got acts directed at a person.
I'm not gonna go through each one,
but that can be intimidation, harassment, et cetera.
Then a disregard for community or personal wellbeing,
so that's noise, rowdy behavior, unreasonable behavior.
Issues of public space, so that could cover various things,
but it can be drug and substance misuse,
alcohol -related antisocial behavior
and some of those issues.
also extends to abandoned vehicles as well.
And then you've got the environmental aspect,
so that's vandalism such as graffiti,
littering, fly tipping, and those sort of offenses.
Sorry, I'm having an absolute nightmare
with this presentation, it's not skipping through.
Yeah, it's just...
Right, so the tools and powers that are available
to deal with antisocial behavior,
I'm really conscious of time,
so I'm not gonna go into the ins and outs,
but when the antisocial behavior,
the first tools and powers to deal with it came in
back in 2004, there were 19 different interventions,
so it's a lot, it was quite muddled.
When the 2014 act came in, it streamlined that down.
So there were six different legal interventions,
and on top of that, there's two measures
that are designed to give victims a say.
So that's the ASB case review,
which was known as the community trigger before.
And what that means is that when a threshold is met,
a victim of antisocial behavior can request
a full case review by an independent panel.
There's also the community remedy.
Sorry about this.
Okay, so in terms of the tools and powers I've spoken about,
it was streamlined down to six tools and powers.
I'm not gonna go through each one here,
but the reason that I've put it here on the screen
and it will be shared in the presentation pack
is just to show really that antisocial behavior
isn't just the police's responsibility.
These housing, these tools and powers
can be used by housing providers.
They can also be used by the local authority.
We have a partnership working group in place at the moment
and we're reviewing how we use these tools and powers
across the partnership to make sure we're using them
as effectively as we can.
Sorry, if you could, yeah, my, I don't know what's going on here with mine, sorry.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, Callum.
Okay, so in a minute I'm going to go into a specific example around a location and how
as a partnership, so that brings in various different agencies, we actually respond and
deal with crime and anti -sociative behaviour.
First of all, I've just got on the screen here some of the method that we take when
we're looking at what's required with problem solving.
We have a triangle there for victim, location and offender and we break that down so we
look at what the issues actually are, what we need to put in place to address those issues,
importantly who will lead on them because as I said that's not always going to be
the case.
We look at what outcome we want to achieve and then we agree on a multi -agency problem
solving plan. That is where the community safety officers that I manage will come in.
Their role, fundamentally, is to oversee and to coordinate the action plan. To ensure that
the action plan delivers, we potentially set up a tasking group and then as that goes on,
we oversee then the delivery of the plan,
monitor and review actions.
Thank you.
So the specific location I'm gonna talk about
is some of the work that we've been doing in Ballum.
That's our Community Safety Officer
who some of you may know, Victoria Boyle,
has been working closely with agencies in Ballum.
This is an ongoing action plan,
so I'm aware there are still some issues,
but we're working through a plan
and there's been a lot of measures put in place here.
Right, so I'm just gonna break down some of the issues
that we were made aware of,
and then I'll talk through some of the approaches
that were put in place across the partnership.
So the issues were burglary,
particularly theft of bicycles,
vehicle crime, both theft off and theft from motor vehicles,
robbery, anti -social behavior, rough sleeping,
and then the safety of women and girls.
Okay, so in terms of burglary, the key issue
that we made aware of was that there's a spike
in residential burglaries and that was sheds
generally being broken into and bikes
quite often high value being stolen.
So some of the response that was put in place
was that the Met Police put in place an operation
specifically targeting burglaries.
We purchased some shed alarms and we've started
the process of rolling those out
and generally to repeat victims or vulnerable victims.
There's been numerous partnership events
but the one I put here was outside Sainsbury's in Baddam.
Neighborhood Watch attended that as well
to do some promotion and encourage sign up.
We did bike marking.
And there's been some new crime prevention materials
designed as well by my service.
So again, vehicle crime was raised,
particularly keyless car thefts
in the Baddam Triangle area,
as well as theft from motor vehicle.
So again, there was another operation launched
by the Met Police to target high profile offenders.
In one case, they identified and arrested
and prosecuted an offender who was sentenced to seven years.
A new leaflet was produced by the Community Safety Service
for this operation and there were leaflet drops
as well as pop -up events in hotspot areas.
Ready for the next slide, Callum, please.
Thanks.
So one of the other issues was robbery, and this was a spike in school children robberies.
So the Safe Neighbourhood teams moved shift times to align with school finish times, and
there was a collaboration between services to understand the profile of victims of this
crime, which schools they attended, and children's services worked with the community safety
team to do school talks in those schools that were identified.
and again we did pop up events in hotspot locations.
What we've tried to do is make them,
as these issues are occurring,
we're doing pop up events, going into that location
and speaking to local residents.
And then, and social behavior, as I said at the beginning,
it is quite wide ranging, so just some of the interventions
and measures that we put in place here.
So the lighting, for instance, on the Bannan Bridge
which hadn't been working for around 18 months.
Victoria, the community safety officer,
liaised with TFL to get that sorted, that's now working.
The graffiti team at the council
have responded to 28 separate incidents
and removed graffiti in those locations.
We worked with the local travel lodge
because their car park was identified as a hotspot,
so we've worked with them and encouraged them
to now install the gates of the car park
because that was a hotspot.
We launched ones with business against crime in Badham,
that's still ongoing work,
but we're working with retailers there,
particularly around shoplifting offenses
and the anti -social behavior businesses experience.
We've worked with British Transport Police
in proactive operations that they've run in Ballum
and there's been partnership attendance
and engagement there.
I spoke about the pop -up events already
and then we've held walk and talks in Ballum
because the safety of women and girls
was an issue that was identified.
Rough sleeping, I am aware that there are still hotspot locations in Ballym, however we set up a separate task and finish group for this,
particularly looking under Ballym Bridge where there were multiple individuals who were not just rough sleeping and maybe not even necessarily rough sleeping,
but what they were doing was gathering lots of items,
blocking the pavement,
and engaging in other antisocial behavior.
So the approach there is a mix of engagement
with some of the outreach teams,
but also enforcement where necessary.
The next location that we're looking at is Ballin Library.
And just some of the wider work that goes into this,
the community safety officer identified
that the charity bins outside Sainsbury's were an issue
because rough sleepers were taking items from there.
So we've engaged with the retailer
and those bins have been removed.
So there's lots more work gone on in Badham
but I just wanted to give really an idea
of how wide anti -social behaviour is
and to give an idea of the number of agencies
that are involved in these plans as well.
I said the seven community safety officers on my team
so we do have other plans similar to this.
We're working on Roehampton,
we've got an established plan in place in Tooting,
Southside Shopping Center and Falconbrook.
They're the big plans that we have.
There's also smaller bits and smaller issues
that we deal with that don't necessarily require
a whole plan.
Apologies for the IT issues,
but hopefully that gives an oversight
of some of the work that we do as a partnership.
Thank you very much Lee. Has anyone got any questions?
Hi there, I'm Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballin Ward and just wanted to say thank you Lee and team,
amazing work. I am still slightly concerned about the rough sleeping because it's been going on for
a number of years and I'd be really grateful if the police could intervene on that. I'm
are hanging around outside Ballum Library.
You mentioned Ballum Library.
It's very intimidating for people
that live on Ramsden Road.
They are also the same men, I believe,
that were around the back of Sainsbury's about 18 months ago.
This is really worrying for residents.
I get so many emails on this
and would really appreciate some support on that.
I know the council is doing everything it can,
but please, really grateful,
because obviously the antisocial behavior
is linked to the rough sleeping, so thank you.
And also one more other point, if that's all right,
and that's just to do with, we've had some feedback
and some complaints from residents in Lakewood Road
concerning parcel theft, and I'd be really grateful
if the police could let us know and the council
what they're doing to address that,
because obviously we have some pictures as well
of these individuals, they've been roaming the streets
for a while and they're still breaking the law
and making residents feel unsafe in their own homes.
So thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
That's very helpful.
I'll certainly take away the five males,
five people under the Bellum Library
and speak with my team about that
and make sure we have a look at that
and also link in with Lee and Victoria in relation to that
because I think there's that piece of partnership working
is probably the most key thing there, isn't it?
Lakewood Road, I am aware of.
That's certainly been an ongoing piece of work
coming through this week, actually.
I think a big part of that,
and I know Mr. Rajan has been engaging with the complaints
in relation to that as well.
I'll happily engage with you about that,
about what we're gonna do.
Certainly happy to do it afterwards if that's easiest.
We'll have a proper conversation.
but I think we spoke before this as well around it.
It's a piece of work we will do.
Parcel theft is quite a considerable issue across,
well nationally if I'm honest.
I don't think it's an isolated thing in Lakewood Road.
Evidentially we have to do a piece of work around that
because I don't think the crime statistics
we have reflect the issue.
So I think the first point of court feedback I would give
is please can we encourage people to report?
And I would say that in every crime type everywhere.
The more we, we can't always fix the issue then and there,
but the more we know, the more we can,
the more effective we can be and the more effectively
we can task to issues.
I think in this particular issue, quite a lot of it's been,
Let's put it this way, I ran the search today
and I couldn't find a crime report for Lakewood Road
in relation to this issue,
which sort of hamstrings us a little bit.
Now I have had a conversation and we will go back
to see if we can find it, but also what I would say,
if you do engage with your constituents about it,
please can you get them to feed in if they have reported it?
I don't want to miss things, so if they can feed us in the number, we can find it and
try and piece things together.
So please do encourage everyone to report it as much as they can, and we would do it.
I think there is also probably a crime prevention aspect to this as well in terms of lots of
parcels unfortunately are left by delivery companies very visible to people passing on
a road, and that is an issue that could be improved.
I would certainly encourage the use of lockers by delivery companies rather than having it left outside your premises as such.
But we will engage in that piece of crime prevention work as well because it's also part of our role.
And in actual fact we've got a meeting I think on Thursday with Victoria around the Lakewood Road issue as well.
So we are doing a piece of work around it.
Thank you very much and can I ask that you invite me to the Lakewood Road meeting on Thursday as well. Thank you.
Thank you for raising that. With Lakewood, I have responded back to the individuals who
have raised this for us. I know it is not just one or two, there are a number of residents,
so I know some of them are probably watching online, so just rest assured that it is being
looked at and we'll give it the highest priority and we'd want to work with
yourselves, with the community safety team and there's lots of other measures
we want to put in place so it's it's a long -term piece of work but in the short
term it is being looked at. My only advice is I know some reports suggest
that some of the residents have been intimidated and perhaps threatened
that's not acceptable so I would ask that in those instances please ring 999
9 and get that immediate threat dealt with, but for the long
term. Please, please, please report, because we have
identified two individuals as potential suspects from the
photos that have been submitted. This call came in the number
of emails Sunday evening. By Monday, 10 o 'clock, that had
happened. So it can move quickly, but we do need witness
statements and things like that to progress. So rest assured,
we are looking into it. Thank you.
With regard to the rough sleepers, especially around Tooting Broadway, there seems to be
an awful lot of them gathering around Sainsbury's and opposite, where the talk, NHS talk offices
in that road. Recently the office that was there for drug abuse and alcohol misuse has
moved away. It's no longer in Tooting. So a lot of those people have no access to support
locally. I think that begging has increased and some have become quite aggressive with
people walking by begging. With regard to noise, I always thought my first port of call
were noise was the council and that was that there was a noise, you know, nuisance department
that would come out if the noise was happening particularly at weekends and say from, you know,
to notify them early enough for them to be able to come out. So it's kind of working out who should
you contact first, is it the police, is it the council and, you know, I know during COVID they
were very scared to come out because of threats and other issues that were going on at the time
and obviously for the disease, but, you know,
are we back to a normal base now in terms of how that kind
of noise nuisance is being dealt with?
Thank you.
With the noise nuisance, the first port of call is the
Environmental Health Office, so through the local authority.
They will link in with us if there's any sort
of additional threat to them or they need our assistance.
Just to give you an example, some work that was done
with the community safety team at Wandsworth for Falconbrook
during the summer, we tend to sort of have loud music
and speakers being placed out and about
and the work with the community safety team ensured
that we were able to serve notices prior to anything
taking place on certain individuals that are identified
which then minimised any inconvenience for the residents.
So where there's aspects we can take action, we will do.
Thank you, Chair. Very quickly, as we all know, homelessness has increased quite substantially,
particularly since Covid, but the Council have actually set up a rough sleepers team to engage
with people who are rough sleeping to try to ensure that they do actually have proper
accommodation. So this is ongoing work. Thank you.
Thank you. You've had your hand up for quite a long while. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm Acting or Interim Chair for the Nine Elms Ward. I'm standing in for Liz Landers and things.
I've got a few things. I welcomed Leigh's support on the community safety.
Lots of good stuff going on there but by example Nine Elms wasn't mentioned there at all.
There's been a clear request for Archers 42 and Merchants Way hoarding
to have some additional measures put in there for the last two and a half years.
Obviously, we'd welcome an update on that, please.
There's been an increase in phone snatches and robberies to the person.
We've got two great PCs on our patch, Connor Landemore and Izzy Ensby.
but I understand that they put in a request
for additional resources, at least for a temporary basis.
It'd be useful to understand
whether that's been approved, please.
And then I think the last thing on my list
was the encampment or the protest by the US Embassy.
We've got residents with families, with elderly,
and these protesters, while everyone needs
a right to protest.
These can go on early in the mornings, all day,
late at night, for weeks on end.
And we understand it's been raised
with environmental health, with the community safety team,
with the police, that it's been pushed up the ranks
of the police and at one point in the senior leadership
it was no further action.
So it's an understanding of what can be done
to allow people to protest,
but at the same time people with young children
or elderly trying to sleep.
Have that sort of peace and quiet at home please.
Yeah, thank you for raising those issues.
I also cover Nine Elms and Connor and Izzy both work for me.
In terms of the bid, that meeting was today
and a bid has been approved so I can answer that one for you
and we will work out exactly how we utilize those resources going forward.
So there is a resource coming your way, I think is the positive news.
In terms of the protesters, it is also something I'm aware of.
I'm at a meeting on Thursday as well in relation to that with the council
because I think it needs a joint approach.
It's quite a tricky one because obviously it's the place we have to work within the law
and the law doesn't always fit the criteria.
So we have considered application of various laws,
but at the moment, certainly from the information
I've been given, what is going on doesn't fit
a policing power to take further action.
But we work with the council to see what collaborative
solution we can come up with.
The hoarding is not an issue I'm aware of, I'm afraid,
so I can't really answer that one.
I don't know if that's a thing.
She is. So, yeah, Stacey Hilton is the Community Safety Officer for Nigh & Elms. If you give
me your details afterwards, I'll ask Stacey to give you a call. I can't remember the ins
and outs of Arch 42, but I know that Stacey has been dealing with it. Pass me your details
and I'll ask Stacey to call you.
Hi, thank you. I'm Fiona and I'm Vice Chair of the Ballym SNT, sorry, is that a bit loud?
the SNT for Ballem.
When we judge three, and we vote on three priorities
in our ward, we clearly are voting
for the most serious offenses.
However, and you've already mentioned it today,
that I also represent my residence in Latewood Road,
and it actually was one of the images
that you put up on the screen, Lee,
about the community safety officers
and the SNT police that came locally, so thank you.
But what I'm asking is, there is a huge amount
of local crime in our road parcel theft,
and I would challenge that we spoke earlier on,
that there were only eight parcel thefts
in 18 months reported, and I can guarantee
there's an awful lot more from my road. It's very difficult to get residents to
report because you know you are faced with knife crimes and 15 year olds that
are being attacked in the park for their mobile phones and a parcel, it doesn't
it doesn't seem important but the parcel thefts and we have shared photos with
you are becoming so aggressive in our road. They own the road. They walk up like a swanky
sort of walk. And they now, mums and ladies, we can't go outside when we know. We have
a strong WhatsApp group and we know when they're in the road. I've also shared this and I take
the notes at the SNT. I've been sharing this for over two years. But obviously this lower
level crime is you don't have the ability to solve it.
So I'm also asking that but also to the council is we're starting to look at our own options.
What can we do and what can we can ask the council for and if you can identify like if you just came once
that these people come once or twice a day.
Can you introduce... Sorry, can I ask you to hurry up, please because we normally finish at 8 o 'clock.
Thank you. If you can introduce a public spaces protection order for these
Individuals and just get them out of our road because it's not safe. Thank you
I'm Tom Glockner plow state on Lower Richmond Road. We rely heavily on the safer neighborhood
Thamesfield police to help us out and abstractions seem to be
increasing at a higher and higher level.
And I know there's some measures being undertaken
to grab other personnel from different divisions,
desk jobs and so forth.
But it just really hinders their ability
to successfully present a deterrent to the neighborhood
when they're constantly being abstracted
and we have none of them patrolling the area.
So it's just a huge issue that really needs to be addressed.
That's very kind, thank you for raising that.
For those that don't know me,
I'm Inspector Steve Burke, I cover the Putney Cluster which obviously includes Thamesfield
Ward.
Just in relation specifically to Thamesfield Ward, just in the last two weeks we've got
a new sergeant who's filled that position.
Our two PCs that are assigned to your ward are both fully operational and they're out
there doing it.
Just some good news I guess from Thamesfield, obviously the main focus really is around
the High Street there's been a lot of issues in relation to retail theft,
antisocial behaviour, both alcohol related, homelessness, public urination
and also some youth related ASB. So there's a lot of work going on in and
around the High Street as I say our offices are fully operational. The PCSO
that you've got, Alex, is absolutely fantastic as you probably are possibly
aware she's actually pregnant at the moment. But we've got some really, really good work going on.
In terms of patrols, as I say, whilst the focus is very much of the high street,
we've got some new resources in terms of we've got some new pedal cycles, we've got cycle -trained
officers and our focus is very much on patrolling those areas that have traditionally had problems
such as along the embankment our theft from motor vehicles have reduced around
one, sorry, around Enterprise Way down the other end of the ward.
We've worked on an eviction of a family of concern and as a result of all of
that work there is some really really good work going on with Thamesville but
if you've got any specific issues I'll speak to you afterwards and we'll
work towards those.
Just to echo that all three officers are very good PC Alex, PC Rachael, PC Alicia are fantastic.
I just want them to continue to get work.
That's very kind of you to say, thank you.
Lee and that would be the last one because we're running out of time, thank you.
Hi there, good evening my name's Alex, just acting on behalf of Wonder War tonight.
I've heard a few frustrations mentioned already which I'm sort of very much feeling at the moment,
probably starting with the motor vehicle theft we've experienced.
Both incidents were reported. My road's Vanderbilt Road, you may be familiar with that, just off Garrett Lane.
There was a very aggressive theft in February and then it was actually my own moped that was pinched or attempted to be stolen in April.
the characters involved were very brazen. They were sitting in front of cameras for ten...
Can we hold on a moment there, Alex? You've sent in some questions for the...
and you've mentioned that same road. Are you speaking about that now? Because that's not...
we haven't reached that part of the agenda.
Right, okay. When's appropriate to mention the various issues? Next item?
We've finished taking your answer but then we won't do it when we get to the questions
for the inspector.
Sure, would you like me to continue?
Yes, please.
Really, those two issues were pretty shocking.
We had people standing outside people's houses with angle grinders for 10 minutes feeling
very comfortable.
if I'm totally honest, their new neighbors were watching,
their new cameras were on them, they did not care.
Obviously, they're masked up, you're familiar with this,
they wear dark helmets, and all you can see
is their eyes coming through, but really,
the frustration was how it was dealt with.
I just got told, oh, they were hooded up,
probably nothing will happen.
It's frustrating to hear that as a resident,
because you're saying, report the crime,
which obviously you do, and you need the stats,
and I totally get that.
I'm not expecting miracles, but I think the problem is
we just don't feel a presence at the moment.
There's a real sort of, how do you call it,
the morale's quite low because we just feel that
unless you're getting called out for a knife or a gun,
then it is low priority.
And I get you guys have huge issues
on your shoulders at the moment,
but it's just quite worrying.
Quite a lot of the time, don't feel safe.
And then mixed in with that,
We get people belting down our road really fast.
We've raised it with the council,
but they don't fill the stats, warrant bumps,
and they don't fill the stats warrant
having a one -way street.
But the amount of road wage we witness is ludicrous.
We had a standoff a couple of weeks ago for an hour.
Just really ridiculous situation
where two people wouldn't back up.
And it's just a bit worrying.
The mood is quite aggressive out there.
and you know London's a great city but we're just screaming for a bit more
presence from you guys where possible and I appreciate resources are hopefully
coming back with them maybe a new government who knows but it's it's
pretty frustrating out there for us as residents.
Yeah thank you for that I think from our point of view we are keen for our officers to be out there as much as possible I think we are just as frustrated when they're
taken off for various other things, unfortunately.
I know a piece of work is going on to try and minimize that.
So hopefully you will see them more.
I can't make too many promises,
but we all work very hard to make sure
officers are out there as much as possible
and as visible as possible in your areas.
Thanks for raising that.
So I've answered that in the questions,
but just to add a bit more detail,
with the speeding and things,
we'll share that with our transport traffic colleagues.
They love catching people speeding so we'll look to put some operation down there in relation
to that.
With the theft element, we'll look into that to see what images were shared with us
to see if we can use any new technology that we've got to try and identify and see if
that investigation has got any other avenues that we can use to pursue.
But motor vehicle crime is taken seriously and we'll do everything to try and deal
with that.
Just so you know, I need to...
Alan and Betsy, so, go ahead.
I'll get James to come back to you on that.
Thank you very much Alex.
There are a number of questions you've asked that you wanted to table as well tonight.
Most of them are local authority issues and we're going to get them to respond to you
after.
Now, for the rest of the meeting, normally we finish at 8 o 'clock and we've run over
quite a lot. I would like us to just do the questions for the superintendent and the two
verbal updates from Leigh, which is on the early prisoner release and the safer neighbourhood
project funding update and the rest of the ... Well, it's only the war panel chairs,
if you'd like to take that for information. Do you mind just going on for another 10,
15 minutes at the maximum.
OK, thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Joe is online.
Do you want me to ask if Joe's online?
Joe Prosser, she's presented a question.
Well, we can read Joe's question.
We can read Joe's question.
If she's online.
Do you want me to read it, or do you want to read it?
Yeah, no, you can read it.
We need to get on.
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
We had a Joe Prosser is online.
She submitted a question, but I don't believe her.
I don't believe her volume is working, so I'll read the question.
From the last open meeting in my ward, there's been a great deal of concern over the lack
of police presence in the area both day and night.
In particular, is the area around Vanderbilt Road with ongoing road rage, speeding, car
theft and moped theft intimidation to name but a few of the issues experienced?
And I think Jo would just like a response on that from the police.
I think it's the same issue that Alex has just raised so we can pass that one. Thank you. Yep. I will speak to Alex afterwards
Thank you
And we also had a question submitted from mr. Bat who's unfortunately not able to attend this evening. Mr
Bat asked are there any plans for additional officers to walk in the streets and talk to residents?
They need more resources encouragement and additional funding. They're doing a good job in difficult times
That sounds more like a comment than a question, but I appreciate the sentiment
and we do our absolute best to engage with whoever we speak.
That is literally our job is to speak to people.
And if you see officers chatting to each other and not to you,
please just say, can we have a chat?
Yeah, thank you.
Can I just say, when I saw this question, I just did one ward, Wandle.
There are 48 streets in that ward.
Definitely, we can't have the officers walking in all those streets.
That's just one ward.
When I saw the question, I thought, let me just look at a ward and take the number of
streets in it.
Yes, we would like more officers in the streets, but it's impossible to get people to walk
around all those streets.
Leona, you were asking a question.
Thank you.
Actually, I didn't introduce myself at the beginning.
My name is Leona Cooper and I'm the London Assembly Member for Merton and Wandsworth.
I just wanted to, I got involved in the Lakewood Road ASB issue and I would like
to thank the police and also Councillor Henderson for their swift responses
because there was a lot of emails backwards and forwards over a weekend so
that was very welcome but I did just want to raise, we were talking about
anti -social behaviour, one thing that comes up all the time is the issue of
fly tipping and it was raised with me just on Saturday morning by some very
angry residents in East Putney Ward. I'm not sure if any of them are here this evening.
And I know that the Council has been trying very hard to press that and has put in cameras
actually in this area because it's particularly right. But it keeps, it continues to be a
problem and I just wondered if there is anything that we can do because it's clearly criminal,
the Council has responsibilities but, you know, the sort of multi -agency approach. And
the other thing I just wanted to say, and it doesn't relate to this at all, but Niall
Barrett, the chair of the first down, the Safer Neighbourhood team, has sent me a message
to say that he is really sorry, he has got held up and is unable to be with us. He wondered
if not only could I pass on his apologies but also could we also pass our condolences
from this meeting. We have just had a new police sergeant, Paul Joyce, who joined the
Safe Neighborhood team has just passed away, just having joined it, and he wondered if
the meeting could join and we could all pass on condolences to his friends and family.
I'm sure everyone will wish to do that, but that's not relevant, obviously, to my other
comments. Thank you.
Thank you. Our condolences and sympathies go through to him and his family and to his
colleagues.
We had a question asked about PSPOs and Fiona's asked about this, but the PSPO legislation
is not a police. It's the community safety team.
I think I can cover off both those questions. First of all, the fly -tipping. It's not my
I have a team that deal with that,
but if there's particular locations,
send it through to me, and I will get in touch
with the manager who deals with the fly tipping aspect,
and ask them to have a conversation with you.
But what I would say is, just to residents,
to keep reporting it with as many details
as you possibly can, and if there's specific locations,
I can ask the manager to make contact.
Thank you, and one thing that does get raised
is when there's a new site is being developed,
if I can put it in that weird way,
can a camera go up is one of the things that comes up.
In East Partney they have got cameras
at lots of other locations they haven't.
Clearly you can't have them everywhere.
Are there mobile cameras that can be moved around
to help sort of control it?
Because I think cameras do make people
somewhat more reluctant.
I don't think it stops it,
but it increases reluctance at least.
So there certainly are mobile cameras.
The request for those cameras will come in from different teams.
So it might be that my team are working with the police and we're requesting them in an area where there's,
for instance, there might be robberies and we're looking at them there.
You might get ones with housing, need them in some of their housing estates where there's issues.
So it's just balancing the community needs with the risk and managing those cameras.
But certainly they do go in fly tipping locations
and hot spots and the fly tipping team are on top of that.
But it's on a case by case basis, unfortunately.
And with the PSPO, just to cover that quickly,
so the issues that we've spoken about
in that particular area are all,
they're criminal offenses in themselves.
It's not something that the PSPO legislation
was designed for.
That's more around behaviors such as,
so we've got a borough wide public space protection order
in Wandsworth for alcohol related anti -social behavior,
which is something that existing legislation doesn't cover.
So that's what the public space protection order
is designed for.
But as we've done in other areas,
we will work with the police and other agencies
to try and problem solve that.
It's just the PSPO isn't the legislation to use
for that particular issue.
Councillor
Thank you. I've got a couple of very very brief questions. Can the police team give us an update on
ward recruitment and how local teams are getting all of that and
Can the police?
Tell us how they're finding the council's recent upgrades in an investment in CCTV and whether or not the partnership has been beneficial
Cheers
Councillor CASSIDY. Thank you, Councillor. So I carry eight vacancies
at the moment. That was as high as 15, but posts have been filled, so I'm waiting for
officers to arrive from training school in relation to that, and they arrive on 16 December.
So eight vacancies, but hopefully within the next few months as other people shift around
the NPS, I'm looking to get more people from there.
CCTV has been a huge success for us.
The investment in it has paid many, many times over.
They've assisted in saving lives so many times from people who have been threatening suicide,
catching suspects for incidents, robberies and such like.
So there's a long list and Chris Cullen has got a long list.
So my thanks goes to the Council for investing in that.
We have an officer who sits within that team.
But I think collaborative leads, it's been a huge success for the borough.
Thank you.
Could we move on to Lee, your two verbal updates on early prisoner release and the project funding? Thank you.
Okay, after my IT issues you'll be pleased to hear I'm not going to try and get it on
the screen, it's just a verbal update.
So the prisoner release scheme, I'm unfortunately not going to be able to go into the detail
that people might want to hear.
I can't, it's not in the public domain
around the numbers that have been released,
and I can't go into details, obviously,
about particular individuals.
But what I can say is, so for anyone who doesn't know,
although you've probably read about it or seen it online,
so early release scheme designed to free up prison spaces,
so it means that people that are eligible
will serve 40 % of their sentence,
as opposed to the 50 % that it would have been originally.
Obviously that means that probation service and prisons
will have a shorter time period
to carry out pre -release planning.
The first phase of people that were eligible to be released
was on the 10th of September,
and the second one will be on the 22nd of October.
Before all of this happened,
there was a task and finish group
set up by public health within the council.
So that was internal, although obviously there's been
ongoing conversations with our partners within the police.
And that was set up to try and mitigate the impacts
and to coordinate the council's approach
and determine how best we could support other partners.
Probation service are leading on the risk management
and safeguarding checks of people that are being released.
Although I said I can't go into the numbers,
what I would say is that the numbers are very, very low,
and there is a lot of planning that has gone in
to those individuals that are released.
I'm really sorry I can't get into the specifics of it,
but that's the update there.
In terms of the project updates,
I'm gonna rattle through these quite quickly,
but if anyone wants any information on any of the projects,
then feel free to drop me an email,
and I'm happy to have a chat.
I thought it'd be useful for everyone to know
the projects that we have funded.
So each year the Safe Neighborhood Board
get a pot of money from MOPAC
to allocate towards community projects
that fit the MOPAC priorities.
So this year, allocated to projects
we had around 18 ,000 pound.
The projects that we've assigned money to
were One to Earth Neighborhood Watch,
which was 4 ,000 pound.
Children's Services in Evolve are going to be doing a film project around exploitation,
working with young people.
So there's around £1700 allocated to that.
There's a WalkSafe app, which Kira Evans on my team, who's the four community safety officer,
is leading on.
What that will do is, it's an app that can map out locations that are relevant to violence
against women and girls, so it might be safe spaces,
et cetera.
First Down Youth Cafe, so this has been running now
for a couple of years.
3 ,500 pound has gone towards that.
It was set up initially in response to robbery
and anti -social behavior around First Down
that was impacting mostly on young people
that attend Gravenny School.
The Youth Cafe gives them a safe space
that they can go into.
There's a range of activities there
that's on a Wednesday.
Crimes against the elderly, so this is particularly
in relation to scams and fraud type offenses.
We've allocated £1500 to.
That goes towards crime prevention materials,
but also a series of talks
where we go out into the community.
Battersea Park Action Plan,
so there's money allocated towards that,
and that's particularly around robbery,
violence against women and girls, and antisocial behavior.
Bike marking and Dr. Bike session, so that's to go across the whole borough
and there's just over £1300 allocated towards that. I spoke about the shed
burglaries earlier so the bike marking kits were always good to have. Those
projects we had the MOPAC funding come in around two weeks ago and I've got
most of that funding out. I think there's one or two where I'm just waiting to get
the money out to the relevant projects, but many of these projects are already underway
and the ones that aren't, I'm working with the project leads.
Thank you, Lee. And should we make a request for the next financial year because
the turnaround is rather quick?
It is, thanks, Marlene. Yeah, so the turnaround is really quick. To be honest, if anyone thinks
of any projects now, and I'm quite happy to send around the criteria, I'm quite happy
to start collating those now is absolutely fine for us to start collating ideas because
typically we get to the end of March, MOPAC say that they want the projects in the next
two weeks and then we're trying to get these ideas so if we can work together and get them
in advance, obviously that's far better, I will get the criteria circulated. I'm happy
to have a conversation with anybody if anyone has any questions.
Thank you. Anyone has any questions for Lee on those two items? Thank you. It's now 11
minutes past eight and we normally finish at eight o 'clock and I'm sure you quite enjoyed
the information on what the council is doing as well as on the live facial recognition.
I'd like to thank you very much and apologise that we've had to go over but it was a very
intense meeting this evening.
We didn't have anything from the stop and search reports
that we could have shared with you, neither on the custody,
but I understand from John that the custody now is,
the independent custody has now,
staff has been increased from four to nine,
so we should get something in the next month.
The ward panel chairs,
they notes from the both the June meeting,
which we couldn't circulate
because the meeting was canceled
because of the elections.
So it's there for you to read.
And can I just ask if there's any other business at the moment?
Go ahead, Trevor.
Yeah, just a plea, really.
This meeting was advertised very late as being the public meeting for the year.
There's only the one a year.
And it was impossible, really, to get out and reach everybody to say,
can you come at such short notice?
It's a public meeting. You've made the agenda very, very full,
without much time to cover half of it, probably, if it had all been in.
So I'm just saying, can we please think in future,
whenever the next year's meeting is going to be the public one,
that we advertise it to the public and get some of the public here,
rather than people that are here are mainly active already.
Thank you. We tried to get it in the COMS team a bit earlier,
but it was a bit delayed and I apologize for that.
Before everyone leaves, can I, sorry Jan.
Just a quick point on the annual public meeting.
I wonder whether the earlier meeting in summer
might be easier for people to get out,
particularly people who are concerned about coming out
are after dark to a public meeting.
We can look at that, thank you very much.
Okay, thank you all very much for coming
and once again I apologize that we've run over,
It's now 13 minutes past eight.
Could I just ask you to ensure that you've
signed in on the attendance sheets, those who are here.
If you haven't signed in, could you please sign in?
And once again, thank you ever so much for being here.
And I hope you found the meeting useful.
Thank you.