Dismore questions Met Police Commissioner and Mayor over borough mergers, moped crime and the urgent review of non disclosure

January 8, 2018 office

At today’s London Assembly plenary session, focussing on the work of the Metropolitan Police, Andrew Dismore AM, Labour London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden questioned Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan over borough mergers, moped crime and the urgent review of non disclosure in rape cases. (Videos here, here and here)

After the meeting, Mr Dismore said:

‘There are so many issues affecting the police at the moment, it was difficult to decide which to raise.

‘I am concerned about the borough merger of Camden and Islington. we still haven’t seen any objective evaluation criteria or the actual or projected financial savings for the borough mergers, despite many requests for and promises of this information.

‘However, we have heard worrying accounts that response time improvements in the pathfinders is due to the temporary restructuring or redeployment of dedicated ward officers and schools officers into response teams. Whilst the Commissioner said it was the case that there were such temporary movements to improve response times this was no longer the case and they have taken other measures to improve attendance.

‘One local concern is the need for continuity and stability at the BCU commander level. As the Camden and Islington Commander has now moved on, this needs to be addressed.

‘With Camden having the highest number of moped enabled crime in London and Islington a close second, the police have argued that progress is being made, with a drop of 11% in the theft of mopeds and 12% in moped crime, which is of course welcome, but even allowing for that reduction it still means too many are being committed- an average of about 100 a week in Camden alone and about 1700 a week across London. Over the two year period to 31^st October, only 247 suspects were arrested in Camden and Islington to ordinary people for scooter related offences as against the 7500 offences in those boroughs in just the last 9 months.

‘The question is whether the police are winning or losing the war against this kind of crime: the Commissioner says the Met is starting to win it. Are new tactics, which include the use of forensic tagging, four new purpose-built bikes, mobile remote-controlled stingers and snatch squads is creating the ‘hostile environment for those carrying out moped-enabled crime’ that the Met claims? I also question whether it is time to try more radical steps, for example stop and search of male pillion passengers in high offence areas, as this crime is overwhelmingly carried out by teenage boys.

‘Following the collapse of two rape trials in as many days due to a failure to disclose evidence supporting the defence, the Met has launched a review of all live cases being investigated by the Child Abuse and Sexual Offences command. To misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one case like this may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Commander Smith has said he doesn’t think there is a ‘systemic issue around disclosure failures’, but how can he say that in advance of the outcome without prejudging the review he is himself conducting?

‘These two cases represent both an enormous waste of resources and costs by both prosecution and defence as well as the courts, and of course causing awful distress to those unfairly accused over many months. If the evidence had been properly examined and disclosed earlier, the prosecutions could have been avoided altogether.

‘If this review throws up systemic issues, the review may well need to be extended to other types of serious and also concluded cases, for example fraud which also often relies heavily on electronic evidence.’