Dismore questions Mayor and Police Commissioner over poor public confidence in the Met.
In my new capacity as a member of the Police and Crime Committee I questioned the Mayor, Deputy Mayor for Policing, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and deputy Commissioner, over the ‘flatlining’ of public confidence in the Metropolitan Police, during the City Hall Police and Crime Committee session on the police annual report.
I raised a series of issues, including the break up of the popular Safer Neighbourhood Teams and the effect on police visibility ; the extent to which officers were ‘abstracted’ form both Barnet and Camden for duties elsewhere in London; the additional duties ward officers now had to undertake compared to before; and the low numbers of suspects who are successfully prosecuted and convicted.
In 2012, The Mayor set the target of improving public confidence in the Met. by 20%, to be achieved by 2016. In fact, confidence has flatlined over that period, increasing by a mere 1%, from 62% to 63%. Moreover, the Met. is also lagging behind other similar major urban police forces for victim satisfaction, too.
In Barnet and Camden, we have far fewer police officers than in 2010, and those we do have are often taken away for other duties. In Barnet we lose an average of over 80 officer shifts per week and in Camden, over 100.
Only 4% of burglaries in Barnet result in a an arrest and in Camden , just 7%, and then only 3% and 4% respectively lead to a charge. The Met. can’t say how many of those actually end up in a successful prosecution, either.
For the ‘MPOAC 7’ crimes, (those the Mayor deems the most important), again we see figures of only 16% ( Barnet) and 7% ( Camden) for arrests and 6% and 4% for charges.
It is therefore hardly surprising that confidence in the met is lacking and it is now pretty clear that the Mayor will not meet his self applied target.
