Policing report from City Hall, July 2016

Given the importance of the issue, I now produce a separate, more detailed report on policing issues, which you can access here.

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This month’s Assembly full plenary session was on the subject of policing and crime with the Mayor and Police Commissioner. I questioned them on the surge in Race Hate Crime, post the Brexit Referendum.

Our 29th June  Police and Crime  Committee meeting was our first ‘Q and A’ session with Sophie Linden , the new Deputy Mayor for Policing  and with the Deputy Commissioner. Subjects I asked about were safer neighbourhood policing and the probable borough mergers; the upsurge of moped related crime and displacement of this crime from Camden northwards; and the decision of Westminster Council to withdraw CCTV from the West End.

 Our 14th July the Police and Crime Committee meeting was on the subject of serious youth violence: I focussed on the main ‘drivers’ of these offences.

The 19th July session was another Q and A session with the Deputy Mayor and Deputy Commissioner. I again asked detailed questions about hate crime. The best estimate is that 80% of these offences go unreported, so there is much to be done to make ‘zero tolerance’ a reality.

I also led the questioning on the Met.’s budget, including the uncertainties of the funding formula review and also the way the Government does not properly reimburse London for the policing costs of our capital city functions.

 More importantly, though, I challenged the panel in some detail about the budget implications for safer neighbourhood policing in both boroughs, as I had learned that inspectors and sergeants were being cut to pay for the increase in centralised firearms officers, having previously been assured that safer neighbourhood policing would not be affected by this.

I returned to this theme the next day at the last MQT before the summer, as it is clear the Met are still implementing the policies of the previous Mayor, reminding the new Mayor of his pledges to implement ‘real’ neighbourhood policing in the forthcoming Policing and Crime plan.

The following day, Sadiq Khan announced that every London ward will have two dedicated Police Officers plus a Police Community Support Officer by the end of next year. This seems to have begun in Barnet already. The object of the allocation of a second officer to each ward will help the Met. improve relations with local communities and deliver on the Mayor’s pledge to “re-establish real neighbourhood policing.” The officers will be drawn from existing resources and will be ‘ring-fenced’ from being called away to other duties. As this is very recent news, the information is still quite sketchy and I am trying to find more details of what this means for the wards in our two boroughs. I will report further on this next time after I have met both Borough Commanders which meetings are scheduled over the next month.

I also raised with the Mayor the consequences of the apparent impunity of those who wave the flags of proscribed terrorist organisations on protest marches.

As usual, I asked a full range of written questions to the Mayor about policing.

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