PCC transcript: my questions on Moped Crime

You can watch the video here:

Moped Crime Questions to Deputy Mayor November 17 from Andrew Dismore on Vimeo.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Thank you.  Camden, one of the boroughs I represent, has 100 times as many as you have in Sutton.  Between January and September Camden had over 4,000 moped-enabled offences and Islington 3,500.  Between them they account for nearly half of those across London.  I do not suppose, in parenthesis, it is a very good advertisement for the merged Basic Command Unit (BCU) that the two worst offenders are Camden and Islington. 

Parking that to one side, we are starting to see moped crime going beyond pavement snatching.  In Camden we have seen shops being stormed by moped criminals to steal laptops from people sitting have a cup of coffee in a café.  From the Apple store last week there was a major raid stealing thousands of pounds of laptops and mobile phones.  I would like to briefly read an email I received the other day from one of my constituents that is typical of quite a few I have received recently.  It is from a woman called Jessica.  She writes this:

            “I wanted to get in touch with you as I am getting increasingly concerned about the spate of increasingly aggressive and violent moped attacks taking place across London, but particularly where I live in Belsize Park (an area one would have thought not a crime hotspot).  I personally had a near miss last week and almost did not report it to the police as I felt there was nothing they could or would do.  This is despite the fact that most of my friends who live in the area have been a victim or have witnessed this sort of crime.  However, having heard about the robbery on Monday in Highgate, in which two assailants smashed their way into a bakery on an afternoon, I was compelled to write to ask you what the Mayor is doing to combat this.  It currently appears to the public, and I am sure the assailants too, that they commit these sorts of crimes with impunity.  I have never felt afraid of walking the streets of London but now it feels like an increasingly frightening prospect.”

That is a typical email I am receiving from constituents from Camden about this.  It seems to me that the moped thieves are becoming more inventive, more aggressive, more brazen and more violent and consequently – as this constituent, Jessica, indicates – more frightening.

What is being done to tackle this?  It seems to be getting worse and more frequent, not better.  Both the assailants and the public think there is no way you are going to catch these people.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  There are two elements to this.  There is the element that is the stealing of the scooter in the first place, because clearly that is what is facilitating them, and then you have the criminality that comes after that.  It is a very significant focus for us.  As you point out, they are doing a range of criminality.  You have the basic snatches, if I can call it that.  You then have snatches where there is more violence involved.  We are now seeing offences in relation to particular premises.  For the last six months we have been focusing very hard on this.  Over the last three months the theft of mopeds themselves has gone down by 11% and consequent crime has gone down by 12%.  We are now starting equally to see some good convictions on these offences.  That is starting to get a bit of publicity as well, which is helpful.  There is no doubt this has been picked up by the media and every time there is an offence now it is getting more prominent. 

 

We have attacked it from a number of issues.  A number are about dealing with the individuals we know.  We do operations not only around the individuals we know are involved in this – back to our earlier conversation around violence, some of the same individuals are the ones involved in this criminality so you can do that proactive targeting – and targeting those people we know are helping them with the scooters.  There is a very large prevention campaign around scooters and the Be Safe campaign.  We now badge all of our crime prevention and the last one was specifically around scooters and the theft of them.  The challenge is that there are loads of them.  Unlike motorbikes – people love their motorbikes – they do not really care, genuinely speaking.  Scooters are very much for commuting, put it there, people go away and they are not high-value items.  We have worked really hard with the community of people who use scooters and mopeds to try to get them to do what they can to prevent these things being stolen in the first place.  You will have seen some of the stuff on the streets and by the places where the scooters are locked up.  There is lots of campaigning work around that.  There is work being done in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office and at a national level, working with the industry, about what the industry can do to make the vehicles less easy to steal.  The problem is they are very easy to steal at the moment.  We are also bearing down tactically around how we can deal with it.

It is not true to say we cannot pursue people who are on scooters.  That is not the case.  However, as with any pursuit a police officer will engage in, they are conducting that continuous dynamic risk assessment about the danger to the person they are pursuing, to members of the public and to themselves and having to make that decision.  What we have seen, and what everybody has seen in the media footage that gets out there, is incredibly reckless riding by individuals on scooters.  We have officers who are trained.  We have a process now where we are able to better monitor those with tactical advice sitting in the control centre.  We are also introducing new tactics as well, which no doubt you will have seem from when the Commissioner launched those.  There is the stinger, the thing that deflates the tyres, and we have a better and more deployable version of that piece of equipment.  We also have an ability now to spray individuals with a ‘smart water’ substance that allows us to then go on and do the investigative work.  There is a huge amount of activity. 

You are absolutely right.  This emanated in Camden and Islington.  That is where it first started to emerge as a crime type.  It has been picked up now and that coverage is much greater.  It is not all over London, and certainly is not proportionately all over London, but it has spread.  That is partly because of some of the publicity it has received and because, as I say, the scooters themselves are fairly easy to deal with. 

Operationally and investigatively there is loads of activity.  We are also working with the industry to hopefully try to progress that forward.  It is something we will maintain a focus on to try to keep bringing that down.  As I say, in the last three months we have seen a suppression and hopefully we can continue that.  However, it is incredibly resource intensive.  They are very brazen and it is very bad when you see the images of these kinds of offences.  They are very bad.  I understand entirely how negative that is for public confidence.  The experience you read from your constituent is one that I know is not unique by any stretch of the imagination.  We are bearing down with it as much as we can. 

Andrew Dismore AM:  Thanks for the answer but even with a 12% reduction that still means in Camden an average of ten offences a day.  It is still a high number.  Perhaps you can let me have the number of arrests that have been made in relation to those incidents, particularly in Camden but also London wide.  It will be very helpful. 

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Yes, I can get you those.

Andrew Dismore AM:  However, the concern I have is that we have now seen this new trend of business premises – shops and cafés – being besieged, broken into and stormed by moped-enabled villains.  What I am really concerned about is that people think they are in a safe place, working on their computer and having a cup of coffee, and the next thing they know they are subjected to a violent attack with a hammer to steal their laptop.  That is a different scale of crime all together.  That is because it has not been got to grips with earlier.  I would like to know also to what extent these new tactics have worked.  I know they have not been in operation all that long.  How many people have you arrested as a result of these new tactics?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  I do not have all of those figures.  I will get the arrest figures, particularly around Camden and Islington.  We had an arrest last night after an attack in Westminster on premises.  They had attempted on one premises and then attempted on a second.  They were picked up by officers who noticed the way they were riding around in convoy.  The individuals there, who assaulted one of the police officers and attempted to assault the other police officer, have all been arrested.  They were very young individuals.  It is a real challenge.  We are working with businesses.  We are working on the prevention side and on operational activity.  There have always been, to some extent, the smash-and-grab type offences.  However, this is a very quick and easy method for people to move around.  We are doing everything we can possibly do to try to deal with that.  We have seen some reduction but we have to keep those going and we have to improve them.

Andrew Dismore AM:  You are right that smash-and-grab has been around.  However, we are now not talking about raids on jewellery shops.  We are not talking about people lifting an unguarded handbag as they walk past in an opportunist theft in a coffee shop. 

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  No, I understand that.

Andrew Dismore AM:  We are now talking about people being besieged.  Coming back to your risk analysis when you chase people, is one of the factors you look at what they have apparently done?  On the one hand, grabbing somebody’s phone out of their hand on the street is not pleasant.  The next stage will be threatening with a hammer to grab it, as we have seen.  The next stage beyond that will be violently attacking people in premises, effectively an aggravated burglary I suppose.  Is the seriousness of what they have done one of the factors you take into account in the risk analysis of whether you pursue somebody?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  It always would be.  To pursue anybody is generating risk.  There is a risk from what the police officer is doing.  There is a consequent risk from the way the individual who is being pursued drives, whether in a car or on a scooter.  One of the factors you play into that process is the nature of the offence they are believed to have taken part in.  That is just one of the factors you are trying to bring together to what is a very, very challenging balancing act in terms of making a decision around what the right thing to do is.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Are you pursuing more people than you used to do?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  The answer to that is yes.  I do not know the exact figure. 

Andrew Dismore AM:  Can we have the figures of the number of pursuits, both London-wide and also for Camden offences as well for various reasons?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Yes.

Andrew Dismore AM:  We have the number of offences over the nine months, January to September.  It would be useful to have the number of pursuits.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Is that specifically scooters that you are talking about for pursuits?

Andrew Dismore AM:  Scooters and motorbikes, I suppose.  Also since your new tactics came in the comparative numbers, both of offences and pursuits.  It would be very helpful to have those details.

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