Gang Prevention Programme

Crime and policing latest: the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board hits the skids again, and now LBWF – controversially – wants to disband it

The Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board (WFSNB) brings together councillors and residents, and is a potentially very important component of the local fight against crime, supported, as it is, by LBWF, the Metropolitan Police Service,  and the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC), and charged with ‘bringing police and communities together to decide local policing ... »

‘Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal’ UPDATED

In May 2017, this blog published a post entitled ‘Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal (1)’, which, somewhat unexpectedly, attracted a big readership. What follows provides an update, focusing both on knife crime specifically, and the broader (though intimately related) issue of gangs and gang violence. First off, and very regrettably, it is worth underlining that the knife crime ... »

LBWF’s refresh of its Gang Prevention Programme: spin, spin, and more spin?

It is abundantly evident that many people in the borough, from many different backgrounds, are worried about the seemingly unchecked level of local gang-related crime, and the grave impact that this is having on young people’s lives. It is therefore astonishing that those who turned to LBWF’s website yesterday in order to find out what the Cabinet is intending to do about gangs found themselves gr... »

Waltham Forest’s Safer Neighbourhoods Board and MOPAC funding: the scandal continues

A post of September past (see link below) reported that, though in FYs 2015-16 and 2016-17 the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board (WFSNB) had been allotted £78,000 of Mayor’s Officer for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) funding, and promised to rigorously track how this was spent, it had so far failed to submit anywhere near the required number of monitoring reports. Now it has just emerged that n... »

LBWF Leader Cllr. Clare Coghill and knife crime: some issues that need to be addressed, and urgently

According to the Waltham Forest Guardian, there were serious stabbings in Walthamstow on the 14, 16, and 19 November just past, leading the police to impose a section 60 order, which allows them augmented powers of stop and search. On 17 November, the Leader of LBWF, Clare Coghill, issued a press release: ‘”I fully understand that the community is concerned following the two violent in... »

Waltham Forest’s Safer Neighbourhoods Board and MOPAC funding: a scandal in the making

Previous posts have dealt in depth with the travails of the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhoods Board (WFSNB) – its inability to hold regular meetings, the incompleteness of its minutes, and the fact that it publicly named constituent members without asking their permission, or (bizarrely) even informing them that they had been signed up to serve. Now it emerges that there are major concerns about... »

Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal (6)

In mid-June, I contacted the Mayor’s Officer for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to inquire about whether it or LBWF had prime responsibility for the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhoods Board (WFSNB). A day or two ago, I received the reply pasted below. It is gratifying to learn that MOPAC to some extent validates the concerns which I have laid out in previous posts, and promises that in future t... »

Policing in Waltham Forest: priorities

Following on from my series about knife crime, this and the succeeding post look at wider aspects of policing in Waltham Forest. A sensible starting point is police priorities. Under Mayor Johnson, the focus was on the so called Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) Seven – violence with injury, robbery, burglary, vandalism (criminal damage), theft from the person, theft of motor vehicles,... »

Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal (5)

I hear from reliable sources that some of those community representatives who are currently listed on LBWF’s website as members of the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhoods Board (WFSNB) are both astonished and perturbed that their names have been made public, since they have never given permission for this to happen, and in addition claim that they have neither received any briefing about their sup... »

Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal (4)

Responding to my follow up e-mail to members of the Community Safety Scrutiny Committee, its chair, Cllr. Masood Ahmad states as follows: ‘Just to confirm, the Scrutiny Committee for Communities has not received any data relating to Sanction Detection Rates during the year. However, I would like to reassure you that we looked at a range of performance indicators relating to community safety,... »

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