Policing/crime

LBWF’s Violence Reduction Partnership aims to reduce knife crime, but after 5 years, £6.6m. of funding, and only disappointing results, it urgently needs a re-think

December 13, 2024 Policing/crime

In the middle years of the 2010s, there was escalating public disquiet in Waltham Forest about violent crime, particularly knife crime involving local youth, with newspaper reports focusing on both the volume of offences and the fact that the only a small number of perpetrators were being prosecuted (see links, below).  Accordingly, in November 2018, and largely as a response, LBWF launched a Viol... »

A new study shows that the closure of police stations in Waltham Forest likely was a false economy, and may have actually aggravated criminality

May 2, 2024 Policing/crime

From 2011 onwards, Waltham Forest saw police stations in Leyton, Leytonstone, and Walthamstow close, leaving only Chingford open. There was much disquiet about this at the time, but senior police officers and their allies assured residents that money would be saved without any discernible impact on policing or criminality. Now a paper by Dr. Elisa Facchetti of the Institute of Fiscal Studies sugge... »

Local faith in the police plummets to levels lower than elsewhere in London. Why? Probably because too few criminals are being caught!

June 19, 2023 Policing/crime

It is a striking, though often overlooked fact, that Waltham Forest residents’ trust and confidence in the police has not only declined markedly over recent years, but is also comparatively less favourable than in most other London boroughs. What follows looks at the dimensions of this unsatisfactory situation, and then turns to  discuss its possible causes. Local trust and confidence in... »

Who’d have guessed it? A senior policeman talks nonsense about hate crime at a LBWF Scrutiny Committee meeting, and councillors remain silent

May 9, 2023 Policing/crime

A previous post (see link below) expressed disquiet about the fact that both LBWF and the local Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have been pursuing hate crime in the borough as a priority, even though the evidence shows it is a small-scale phenomenon that doesn’t much worry residents. What follows is written in similar vein, and suggests that not only have LBWF and the police failed to properly m... »

Hate crime in Waltham Forest: setting aside the scary rhetoric, is it as bad as LBWF claims?

February 13, 2023 Policing/crime

Introduction In the last few years, LBWF has regularly asserted that Waltham Forest is afflicted by ‘an unprecedented rise’ in damaging hate crime – especially, according to senior councillors, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and transgender hate crime.  As a response, and leading on from a specially convened Citizen’s Assembly, it has put in place various high-profile awarene... »

Crime up, police sanction detections down, yet the LBWF Safer Neighbourhoods Board hasn’t met since November 2021

September 12, 2022 Policing/crime

In the 12 months ending August 2022, crime in Waltham Forest rose 1.9 per cent, while sanction detections (charges, summonses, cautions reprimands, final warning, etc.) fell by the same amount. Turning to the most common crime in the borough, violence against the person, there were 6,710 offences in 2021-22, 2.3 per cent down on the previous year, which seems a plus, though one that is consid... »

Can the ordinary resident get justice in Waltham Forest?

March 14, 2022 Policing/crime

Some may judge the question posed in the title of this post as superfluous, with the answer so obviously ‘yes’ that it’s not worthy of further consideration. But consider these two case studies. Case One – Mr. A For some years, Mr. A has lived in a flat at a LBWF sheltered housing block.  In March 2021, he answered a knock on his door, and was confronted by a tradesman who claimed to be from ... »

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

October 5, 2021 Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

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

August 9, 2018 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

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?

June 6, 2018 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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... »

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