Policing/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 greeted by the following: Certain aspects of anti-gang work – for example, active police operations – of course must be kept largely confidential. But yesterday’s discussion was about the directio... »

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

February 16, 2018 Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

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 nearly five months down the line, this regrettable situation persists, with MOPAC admitting that the WFSNB’s end of year monitoring forms for 2015-16, plus the mid-year and end of year monitoring... »

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

November 21, 2017 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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 incidents that took place in Walthamstow this week. I would like to reassure you we are working closely with and supporting the police in tackling such incidents and making sure the people involved are ... »

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

September 13, 2017 Cllr. Liaquat Ali, Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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 the way that the WFSNB has handled funding from the Mayor’s Officer for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). The story is as follows. Over the FYs 2015-16 and 2016-17, the WFSNB has (by its own lights) devote... »

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

August 9, 2017 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime, Uncategorized

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 the WFSNB will be encouraged to operate ‘in a more clear and transparent fashion’. The hope is that such change will occur sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, as of today, the WFSNB’... »

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Policing in Waltham Forest: performance

July 19, 2017 Policing/crime

This post turns from its predecessor’s focus on police priorities to police performance. For reasons that are unclear, the most up to date figures borough by borough on number of offences and related sanction detection rates (SDRs) are no longer widely circulated, but some careful searching has unearthed the table appended below. The series therein largely speak for themselves, and paint a rather uninspiring picture. In fact, focusing on the 41 Waltham Forest SDRs for 2016-17 (the extreme right hand column), 34, or 83 per cent, are worse than in the preceding year. And placing Waltham Forest i... »

Policing in Waltham Forest: priorities

July 19, 2017 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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, and theft from motor vehicles. However, shortly after taking office, Mayor Khan introduced some important changes. The previous system, it was argued, had imposed an inflexible and centrally determin... »

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

July 5, 2017 Cllr. Liaquat Ali, Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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 supposed roles and responsibilities, nor even met anyone who has authority for the outfit’s functioning. Their reactions are entirely reasonable. For it is axiomatic that those who stand up to be counted... »

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

June 9, 2017 Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

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, which include data on the total number of recorded crimes, the number of “MOPAC 7” offences, and the number of re-offences by the gang cohort being targeted by the Gangs Programme. We also looked at ... »

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Knife crime in Waltham Forest: a nasty little scandal (3)

May 30, 2017 Cllr. Liaquat Ali, Policing/crime

Cllr. Liaquat Ali MBE JP is the long-standing LBWF Cabinet portfolio lead for community safety and cohesion, a position which involves, amongst other things, responsibility for the local ‘crime and disorder’ and ‘anti-gangs’ strategies. In recognition of his Cabinet role, and in addition to his councillor’s allowance, Cllr. Ali receives the sum of no less than c. £21,000 p.a. Most people will assume that, as a well-paid portfolio lead, Cllr. Ali rigorously attends the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhoods Board (WFSNB), since (a) he is listed as a member of that body (he even include... »

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