Draft27-12

Securing London
as crime changes:
Pictured: below, street
art, west London; right,
ceremonial cavalry and
police with machine
guns behind anti-ram
bollards on Whitehall;
and at a bus stop
across the road, a
piece of graffiti
Photos by Mark Rowe
More reading
MOPAC. the Mayor of
London’s office for police
and crime, recently
published ‘Progress report
- London’s preparedness’,
one year after Lord Harris’
original report on the city’s
resilience after a terrorist
incident. Visit ‘MOPAC
publications’ at www.
london.gov.uk.
44
UNHAPPY
‘Moped crime is
reckless, frightening,
intimidating and
completely
unacceptable.’
Mayor of London Sadiq
Khan.
Savings
and the
city
London has crime and is a target for
terror; it’s also where Britain and
the world does its business.
A
rough sleeper on the
pavement, at 9am; a graffiti
tag on a lamppost; this was
Whitehall, as Professional Security
walked to a Policy Forum for London
seminar about crime and policing
in the city, on arguably the most
sensitive and thus most highlypoliced
street in Britain, a stone’s
throw from Downing Street. Sophie
Linden, the Labour deputy mayor
for policing and crime, was not
long before she made the point that
the Met Police have already made
‘huge savings’, of £600m, and need
to make £400m more. Unless some
more money appears in the budget,
the number of police officers will fall;
below 30,000, for the first time since
2003.
High harm
And crime is rising; and the nature
of crime changing; and terrorism is
not a spike but ‘a sustained shift’. In
the midst of this many challenges,
she went on, it’s essential to have a
strategy, around priorities. While she
stressed neighbourhood policing, and
problem-solving, and no more talk
of targets as in the 2000s, you got
the impression at times that whoever
rated as most of a victim - whether
in terms of ‘high harm’ as Linden
put it, or publicity - would get more
attention. Cyber fraud, gun and knife
and gang crime, and violence against
women and the vulnerable - including
the modish ‘modern slavery’ (isn’t
it just plain slavery?) all had their
speakers at the half-day seminar; not
someone putting the point of view
of business, although from the floor
some from business improvement
DECEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
districts did. You also got the
impression that the homeless, the
violent, beggars and graffiti sprayers,
were (as in other cities, in fairness)
so much lower a priority as to be at
liberty unless they go too blatantly
far. How are the London authorities
making ends meet, keeping all the
plates spinning? Difficult decisions,
new ways of working, partnerships
with business and the NHS; and
the Met is going through what
Linden called ‘a major process of
transformation’ such as the roll-out
of body-worn video to officers that
has gone down well with them (one
officer told Linden it was the best
piece of equipment he had been given
since the handcuffs).
Moped-enabled
On the recently publicised ‘mopedenabled
crime’, whether robbers
riding (stolen) motorcycles to smash
into jewellers and other high-end
shops and grab goods, or to steal
mobile phones from passers-by,
‘you probably have some personal
experience of seeing it’, Met Police
Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey
told the event. He recalled work 20
years ago with the motor industry
to address theft of and from cars.
Likewise efforts now to design
out the crime, for moped makers
to make them harder to steal; and
with local government to fit street
furniture so that moped owners can
lock their vehicles with an anchor
bolt. Like others he suggested that
on cyber and online crime we are
‘not going to arrest our way out’. He
wondered aloud if there should be a
completely different approach to how
we do things online; and think much
more about security, and protecting
ourselves when we are online. As
he put it, people may be frightened
to go into central London, except in
daylight. Stats show there’s actually
a small chance of being a victim
of street crime in central London.
Crime, sadly, affects mainly people
under 24; both as doers of crime
and victims. When you go home at
night, and do online banking and buy
things online, yet you may be quite
happy, Mackey suggested, to ignore
computer updates and to put your
credit card at risk. “That is where we
have got to change the debate around
prevention and how we as citizens
do more in some of these spaces.”
Mackey, too, spoke of ‘difficult
choices’ if the Met’s money stays flat
while London grows. How, while the
police continue their ‘transformation’,
to make sure that police are tackling
the right things, he asked. Crime, and
demand, he said, are rising.
Online reporting
What can we expect to see, then?
Besides police with body-worn video
that ‘officers absolutely love’ Mackey
said, you will see more officers
using tablets, giving them access
to systems and to provide services
on the street. Online reporting is
already at 10pc, he said: “The online
experience is a completely different
one to what it was two years ago.”
He acknowledged that police are
seen as ‘a service of last resort’; if a
person is having a mental health or
other crisis at 2am, it feels like the
only person getting the call is the
police. He summed up: we have to
have more of these conversations;
and pool expertise. As for what
that means, someone from Tower
Hamlets from the floor described his
borough as the ‘biggest drug haven
in Europe’ and the number of police
officers had gone down from 900 to
635; and a former judge said London
prisons were so overcrowded they
were a ‘national disgrace’. That and
other words at the event suggested
that answers lie in work between
agencies, such as (as Mackey said)
a victim of gangs being re-housed
quickly. Services, whether in mental
health services or at an early age, will
prevent crime later; but there seemed
little in practice beyond answering
the 999s. By the time Professional
Security left at least the sleeper had
moved on. p
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
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