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| Knife detecting arch at Mill Hill Broadway |
Following the meeting which Matthew Offord organised last week, I have had dozens of conversations with Met Officers. Some have been official and some have been with friends who work for the Met. I have no doubt at all that our Police are a credit to our City and our country. I also have no doubt that politicians (on the Left and Right) are failing them. I have to say that Mr Offord did not impress me at all with his attempts to pass the blame onto the Mayor, at the meeting. It is not leadership to blame everyone else. As there was no representative from the Mayor present to defend his policies, this was simply not Cricket. Whilst funding is clearly a primary cause, I have concluded that there are four other main issues which are as important and which there is no discussion about at all.
To summarise, the real cause of the policing crisis in the London Borough of Barnet is four fold.
1) Local officers are no longer integrated into the community, meaning that local intelligence is not gathered effectively and the bond of familiarity and trust that facilitates information sharing has been undermined.
2) Closure of local Police Stations has meant that we no longer see the Police as part of our High Street. We have no convenient way to report minor crime to a human being, who can reassure us or give in lost property.
3) We have deluged Police officers with paperwork. When they should be out catching criminals, they are stuck behind computer screens, filing reports.
4) We have removed the administrational support, meaning that highly paid and highly trained officers have to do menial tasks that are a complete waste of their capabilities.
What has made me draw these conclusions. I've lived in Mill Hill all my life. I've seen the whole way Police operate change beyond all recognition in my lifetime. Let me explain why I have drawn these conclusion.
Here's a question for you. Just suppose that you notice your neighbour behaving suspiciously? Just suppose that every couple of weeks, at 2am in the morning when all decent people are tucked up in bed, a large van arrives outside his house. Just suppose that men quietly bring large packages into the large workshop he's constructed at the bottom of his garden? Lets set the scene, the house is a reasonably large house in an area of Mill Hill. You know your neighbour. He is an unmarried, middle aged man who lives with his mother. He keeps himself to himself. As your neighbour, you say hello, but no more. You never see him enter or leave the workshop, apart from the strange deliveries in the middle of the night.
As time goes by, you start to wonder. Why would such a person go to such great lengths to stop you knowing what he was doing? Why would he blank out the window of his workshop? Why are all of the deliveries made in the middle of the night? Why hasn't he married? What is he up to? Would you be concerned? What would you do?
Well a very good friend of mine had just that experience in the early 1980's. We didn't have Islamic terrorism then. The bogeyman of the day was the IRA. London had for many years been a target of choice for republican gangs. We also had the Angry Brigade, the Baader Meinhoff gang etc. People were worried. We didn't have "anti terrorist hotlines". We didn't have 101. You had three choices. The first, if you were really worried or had seen a crime, was to call 999. You'd expect a car with a blue light to be on the scene in minutes, despatched from your local police station. Or if you were less worried, needed to report a crime etc, you'd pop up to the local police station. There would be a friendly desck sergeant. They'd discuss the issue with you. Often, if you were concerned, the sergeant would say "I'll send a Bobby round to have a look". If you found a purse or a handbag, you'd nip up and they'd give you a form. Then there was your local bobby, who walked the beat. In the 70's our local Bobby was Charlie Dawson. He was a mate of my Dad's. They'd drink together at the Services club. He knew all the shopkeepers, all the traders and all the local old ladies. He was a big chap and when he was on his beat and it rained, Old dears would invite him in for tea and cakes until the clouds passed.
So my friend, worried that his neighbour may have been up to no good, happened to chance across Charlie on his rounds. He said "I don't want to make any fuss about this, but my neighbour is behaving very strangely and I am worried that he might be doing something dangerous". Charlie asked for where he lived, the roared up laughing. He explained "That's Gordon. He is a freelance aviation engineer. He repairs the engines of light aircraft. He always gets them delivered in the early hours as it is easier to park outside the house and get the stuff in and out without blocking the road". Charlie continued "You must be the fourth neighbour of Gordon who has reported him to me".
What has all of this got to do with the crisis in policing in the London Borough of Barnet? Well think it through. Charlie had amazing local knowledge. He lived in the community (Woodlands Way, Mill Hill). He drank at the Services club. When people had a couple of beers, they'd be less inhibited about telling him things. He also understood discretion. I've no idea how many tens of thousands of pounds Charlie saved the Met by popping around and having a look. Although I don't personally advocate it, he'd clipped more than a few of my mates around the ear, then dragged them back to their Dad's. There was no "My son couldn't have done that". There was no expensive court case, no criminal record and no reoffending. All of the local villains knew him. If they got caught, they got caught, that was "a fair cop". If they were behaving themselves they'd say "Good morning". I remember Charlie telling my Dad with great humour, that he'd been called around to investigate a burglary. The victim was the girlfriend of another local burglar. She had a brand new colour telly in the flat, that the burglar had missed. At the time, Colour tellies were a luxury item. Charlie recognised that the telly was one that had been stolen from a large mansion in Nan Clarks Lane the week before. He had a real dilemma. He spoke to the girl who said "I'm surprised they didn't take the telly, Dave had a big win on the horses last week and bought it for me special like, he wanted me to have a nice telly so we could watch the cup final next week". Realising that the girl was not involved, he simply said "Look, I think Dave might have bought it from a burglar at the pub. That's probably why they knew to rob you! It was stolen from a house in Nan Clarks Lane. I should really arrest you for receiving stolen goods, but as I don't think your involved, I'll just take it back to the owner and please tell Dave to spend his winnings more wisely next time". The telly was returned accordingly, to a rather disgruntled owner. Charlie realised that they'd just ordered an even better one, expecting a decent insurance payout! Later Charlie arrested "Dave" for another incident thanked Charlie for not nicking his girlfriend and explained that she really had no idea "She's a bit naive like that mate".
The whole scenario wouldn't happen today. I know people who've had telly stolen who have not even had a visit from the Police. I've no idea what the current protocol would have meant for the naive girlfriend. Probably the only person who may have been prosecuted would have been the bloke in Nan Clarke's Lane who overclaimed on his insurance.
The point I am making is that a real local police force can do things far more efficiently and cheaply than the model we have. We have no local police stations any more. I've frankly got no idea what we do if we find a purse. I'd presume we have to go to Colindale Police Station, which for many is a bus ride or possibly two from Mill Hill. If we have a neighbour behaving strangely, we could report them to the anti terrorist hotline. Poor old Gordon would doubtless find his door broken down and Lord knows what else done to him, before they realised he was simply mending light aircraft engines. Or maybe, he wouldn't have been reported? Would that have been better.
I've heard countless examples of the police saying that they don't have the resources. They have to stretch the number of PC's across the Borough and they can't do it on the money that us taxpayers see fit to allocate them.
I have thought long and hard about this. I've spoken to local Police as well as more senior Police who are friends. The Met actually have far more officers than in Charlies day. But whereas in Charlies day, the scenarios I outlined generated virtually no paperwork, these days, Charlie would have spent days writing reports on all of the things mentioned. The Met is flooded under a deluge of paperwork, forms, reports, etc. We pay a kings ransom to ensure that the Police are well trained, then we lumber them with a system whereby they are stuck behind desks filling in reports.
There is a reason for this. Because both the Conservative government and the Labour Mayor don't want to see the number of Police Officers fall as they chop and slash budgets, they have cut the number of back office admin staff. This means that Police Officers have to do many of the administration tasks that lower paid admin assistants etc previously did. An admin assistant may previously have been supporting five front line officers, meaning that each had 20% more time on the beat. That person was maybe paid 1/3 of what the officer was paid or even less. So every three of these that is cut, equates to a cut of nine officers in financial terms.
To summarise, the real cause of the policing crisis in the London Borough of Barnet is four fold.
1) Local officers are no longer integrated into the community, meaning that local intelligence is not gathered effectively and the bond of familiarity and trust that facilitates information sharing has been undermined.
2) Closure of local Police Stations has meant that we no longer see the Police as part of our High Street. We have no convenient way to report minor crime to a human being, who can reassure us or give in lost property.
3) We have deluged Police officers with paperwork. When they should be out catching criminals, they are stuck behind computer screens, filing reports.
4) We have removed the administrational support, meaning that highly paid and highly trained officers have to do menial tasks that are a complete waste of their capabilities.
I know that we can't go back to the 70's style of Policing in London, but there are lessons to be learned and the main one is that Police Officers have to be far more integrated into our community. We need to be far less "statistic driven". I'd welcome any guest blogs on this subject. I'd be especially happy to have on or off the record blogs from serving Police Officers. Am I right? Am I talking out of my backside?
I recognise this. The unfortunate fact is that the police have, over the decades, turned themselves into an Army of Occupation, i.e a force that has no links at all to the people they police. How we revert to a system where the police are of us and for us I don't know but maybe they need to think carefully about their role in society. In the old days there was no target for "offences brought to justice" (OBJs); the absence of crime was its own target.
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