This evening the Conservative-led Wandsworth Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee plans to agree in principle to a scheme to cease the current much loved Parks Police service and move towards negotiating an agreement with the Met as reported in yesterday’s London Evening Standard.
Some Conservative Councilors are putting a gloss on things insisting that the plan will not undermine current policing levels in the popular Battersea Park. But comments by police officers in recent weeks about cuts the Met is facing generally leaves me with no doubt that the ability of the force to deliver on the deal is going to be limited by its own huge budgetary restrictions and mounting pressures on the public order, counter-terrorism and Olympics fronts.
However much the Council tries to tell us it can pull the strings, it knows that the Met Commissioner has responsibility not just for the policing for the whole of London but also overarching responsibility for policing counter-terrorism nationwide and those are his priorities. Funds are limited. Police financing moreover is a complex matter as to who in the end really gets what, with the Met’s main funding lines coming from a cash strapped Home Office and a similarly stretched Mayor’s Office. T
Those planning to pull some Met officers off the streets and let them loose for a while on our green spaces seem willing to sacrifice the very unique role that the existing Parks Police have developed over the years precisely because of its local and community based status- contributing to the safety and security of citizens with its close liaison with local residents and organizations like The Friends of Battersea Park. Without the Parks police, Battersea and other parks face a very real possibility of a less fluid flow of vital intelligence, as well as absence of the kind of park-based permanent presence of officers ther has been until now. Life is on the brink of becoming less safe and less secure for a majority of decent park users.
The Council is telling us- ‘don’t worry it’s al been agreed with Boris’- and the Met will look after existing bylaws and regulations in the Park. But the issue has nothing to do with regulations, but everything to do with enforcement. Whatever might be Boris’s good intentions to make London safer, neither his budget nor the Met’s is limitless. The justifiable overrding fear among park users is that give this mad scheme a maximum of couple years and Battersea Park will be a dangerous free-for-all for every nasty thug in the capital, whether on two or four legs.
