Writing in today’s Guardian, the minister for policing and criminal justice Nick Herbert jumps to the defence of the street-level crime mapping initiative, as a key element of the government’s reform agenda aimed at holding the police to account.
“We live in an age of accountability and transparency. The public have a right to know what is happening on their streets. By opening up this information we are giving people real power-and strengthening the fight against crime.”
Quite right Mr Herbert. The only problem is that such accountability stops short when it comes to policing matters affecting your own party- or so it seems. For it is only by pure chance that I have stumbled upon the information that on Monday night Wandsworth’s full contingent of parks police along with all the local neighbourhood task teams of police and community support officers were deployed to providing security for the annual Conservative Party fund raising Black and White Party in Battersea Park.
The information, as far as I know is neither on the official www.police.uk website so eagerly publicised by Mr Herbert or any ‘map.’ Instead it was slipped out during a Safer Neighbourhood meeting between police and local community representatives last night in Battersea where discussion revolved round the enduring crime problems of the area and the stretched resources for dealing with them.
No surprise perhaps that drug dealing, knife crime, muggings, and burglaries continue to threaten some Wandsworth estates, although the recent violent hijacking and subsequent robbery of a pedestrian in one of Battersea’s leafier neighbourhoods was seen as a potentially worrying new trend for those residents of ‘South Chelsea’.
As worrying, one senior police officer suggested, as the reduced number of officers as a result of the cut-backs. The small but much respected Wandsworth Parks Police have ended all night-time patrols, as a result of staff reductions and vacancies they can no longer afford to fill. Meanwhile local residents received a formal apology from local police in response to complaints that their calls for urgent assistance were being met by a standard question: “Is it life threatening’? ”
As one long-suffering resident from a local estate put it: “So does that mean I can only ring the police if I got someone about to stab or shoot me? “
Understandably civilian attendees of the Battersea Safer Neighbourhood meeting were thus not exactly ecstatic to hear that police officers and community support officers had been diverted from their normal crime-prevention duties to providing a security cordon around the annual Tory knees up so that senior party donors, and politicians could enjoy themselves without the intrusion of the public. Tickets were £300 per head. “The extra policing was all paid for by the organisers, “a senior copper said.
This year there was no champagne on offer –only Winter Pimm’s- at The Black and White Party. But our police were for hire, courtesy of Tory HQ. Whether this helps the fight against crime is open to question.
