The Safer Neighbourhood Panel for Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction Ward met again on Wednesday 14 October and I attended along with some representatives of neighbouring streets.

The Safer Neighbourhoods exercise brings together the local police and representatives of the local community for a two-way discussion about policing and community priorities. It generally meets four times a year but this sometimes has to be adjusted to accommodate the ever-changing priorities of the police team.

On this occasion we met a new Police Sergeant and two Police Constables, at the usual meeting room made available by King’s College Hospital. It was a better than usual encounter as the new Police Sergeant is very much more open to listening to our concerns and sharing candid comments on what the police can realistically perform, given their growing pressure on numbers and the increasing risk of being, in their terms, “abstracted” to other pressing requirements in central London – notably marches and demonstrations which seem to be increasing in number and complexity. On this problem, we pressed them hard to resist such pressures to take them away from their statutory responsibility for our local area, and they admitted that this was often troubling for them though there was little point in protesting against orders coming from the senior levels of the Metropolitan police. They said that pressure from local councillors might help in this argument. As it happens, there were no local councillors present that evening as there was a full council meeting, but we will be communicating this concern to our local councillors.

The police tabled a report on local crime over the last 3-5 months, which we can summarise:

• Burglary is up – business burglaries by six, residential burglaries by 24. The comment was that the residential burglaries are often opportunistic with tools being stolen from sheds; key lock boxes outside properties being broken into; and property doors being unsecured. Their comment was that doorbell cameras and home cameras have been shown to be a good deterrence.
• Theft – including bicycle theft, theft of and from motor vehicles, shoplifting and theft from persons – are all up. What they call Snatch Theft, generally meaning theft of mobile phones, was up slightly, particularly around the station, and around Loughborough junction and the hospital. Shoplifting showed an increase; theft of and from motor vehicles was up by 24 – as we on the street know only too well. I added that theft of parcels from doorsteps in our street had escalated hugely. The police said they have a project in preparation to use plainclothes officers that might be able to limit this crime – though it is clear that in practice they need to have evidence strong enough to support a prosecution. They also know that doorstep theft is often carried out by the same people who are suspected of – as they call it – antisocial behaviour (ASB), which is their term for aggressive begging, drug use and drug dealing which causes disruptive behaviour in residential areas.
• ASB – they know about the problems that we all notice around the station, and the small familiar community of drug users that often congregate around the houses in Osborne Close on Milkwood Road, from where they venture into Station Square. Within their limited means the police hope to increase their patrols of sensitive areas, sometimes by plainclothes officers.
• At previous meetings, the police have sometimes taken refuge in the claim that ASB activities on the territory of the station are outside their legitimate area of competence, being legally the responsibility of the British Transport Police who are never present at these meetings and are difficult to engage with. The police officers did concede that if they needed to pursue offenders into the railway tunnel, for instance, they were free to do so.

Message for the community

The message we took out of this meeting was that the police absolutely depend on reports filed by members of the public, even if in relation to relatively small infringements: these reports generally come into the same database and can be monitored by local police who can spot trends and problems and – within their means – act accordingly.

We are all encouraged to report suspected crimes and ASB incidents either by calling 101, or – better still, online via the Met police website: https://www.met.police.uk/