We've known for a while that 300 sergeants are to be removed from our 630 ward-based safer neighbourhood teams - a Ken Livingstone innovation, as I recall - but the present Mayor's defence of this coalition-driven cut still has novelty value. "We've always made it clear that where there are capable sergeants who can lead more than one SNT, it is sensible to allow them to do that and to let them make use of their skills," he explained last Wednesday, adding: "I think Londoners understand that."
It takes nerve to represent an 8% reduction in personnel as the creation of a career development opportunity, but then Boris has been demonstrating the same dazzling skill in relation to crime and policing for some while.
Every time he makes an announcement such as that there's been a 9.14% fall in the total number of offences in the three years of his mayoralty compared with the three years before - last week's handy Ken-bashing stat - I am reminded of his manifesto assertion that "we all know that we are suffering from an epidemic of unreported crime," and his office's repeated failure to answer to my inquiries about whether he still believes this to be so.
But if, for the sake of argument, we have faith in the Met's crime stats - a thing Boris miraculously discovered in Bexleyheath police station in October 2008 when taking credit for another of his predecessor's initiatives - it is instructive to look at the ones Boris isn't mentioning in these heady pre-election campaign days. A couple of items in Sir Paul Stephenson's report to next Thursday's full meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority are good examples. Here's one:
Overall knife crimes over the period Feb to April 2011 increased [by comparison with Feb-April 2010] by 8.6% (288 additional offences from 3,348 to 3,636 offences) as did knife crime where a knife was used to injure, up by 5.6% (56 additional offences from 1,004 to 1,060).
And here's another:
It is concerning that the number of victims of Serious Youth Violence increased by 5.2% (an increase of 95 offences from 1,843 to 1,938) over the comparison period.
True, Sir Paul also writes that "most aspects of violent crime" have shown a reduction, including gun crime and homicides. But Boris came to power pledging a purposeful response to a chilling increase in the numbers of teenagers stabbing and being stabbed. Evidence suggesting that more rather than fewer under-20s are being violently assaulted, whether with a blade or anything else, entitles us to ask if he's delivering. Whether we'd get a straight answer is another matter.
As for the future of SNTs, recommendations arising from the recent review of them are also on next Thursday's agenda. For some, the loss of sergeants leading the teams and Boris's talk of "scope for a variable geometry" in their use spells the end of SNTs as we have known them, even though the ward will continue to be the "default geographic area" they patrol.
Perhaps they're right, though I'm less bothered about "police numbers" in SNTs or anywhere else than I am about police effectiveness, which isn't precisely the same thing. But I'm bothered quite a lot that a bit of populist claptrap in the Sun calling for "tough" sentencing has had far more attention this week than the violent, criminal harm being done to apparently increasing numbers of young people in our city. By contrast, Boris and those feeding a complicit media on his behalf will, I suspect, not mind at all.
Stephen Harper Dennis Hastert Vaclav Havel John Howard Mike Huckabee
No comments:
Post a Comment