London in crime and security terms is a one-off, besides seeing all the threats of a large urban area – even though London is not only the capital but scores of towns, even villages, writes Mark Rowe.
At least one retailer with a national footprint is saying, I understand, that most of its crime happens in or against its London stores. You would expect a fair percentage of anything to happen in London, if only because it has nine million and the UK has a total of about 70m. That could be due to any number of reasons – London has relatively more young people, who are relatively more likely to commit acquisitive crime? As the largest urban area, criminals can be at their most anonymous? Some parts of the city are (to use an academic, criminological term) ‘crimogenic’, such as London bridges, that attract pick-pockets and scammers who prey on tourists? As an internet search can throw up.
Around Westminster
Two years ago, the journalist Andrew Gilligan brought out for the think-tank Policy Exchange a paper deploring the squalor around the Houses of Parliament, and which noted ‘illegal trading and confidence trickery’ on Westminster Bridge. Those familiar with such crime are struck by its organised nature, including the paying off of those in the vicinity. A sinister upshot is that if the authorities try to carry out a policing operation, no-one criminal is there on the day, as if they’ve been tipped off.
Many Londons
London is not only Westminster, the ‘Government zone’ that’s (ironically, given all the crime Gilligan described) heavily, visibly policed, including indeed the site of New Scotland Yard, now a couple of stones’ throw (only a manner of speaking) from Parliament. London is also the giant White City and Stratford shopping malls; transport interchanges such as Victoria bus and rail stations that historically pull and hold the derelict and feckless, besides legitimate travellers; rich and poor residential districts, sometimes only yards and moments of travel apart. Evidence of how many Londons there really are, apart from the score or more of boroughs, is the 70-plus business improvement districts (out of about 340 in the UK). That implies a geographical district, such as a high street. If businesses inside any BID or town want on-street patrollers, as ‘capable guardians’, providing a service that police cannot reliably provide because they are pulled by so many 999 calls – and besides, police with powers of arrest may not be the ideal uniformed people to turn to, for example for fly-tipping – businesses are going to have to pay for it themselves. As they have done for some years, notably in the West End.
Crowded landscape
Indeed, the range of non-police guardians has become confusing: BID wardens or rangers, and a borough’s own uniformed officers, each with their own name (THEOs, enforcement officers in Tower Hamlets, to the east; a ‘law enforcement team’ to the west in Hammersmith and Fulham, elsewhere some variation on the words community and safety). In central London in particular, you could walk from one BID area to the next, from Paddington to Marble Arch to Fitzrovia to Holborn to Hatton Garden, or Leicester Square to Trafalgar Square (where ‘heritage wardens’ work for the Greater London Authority), over the river to the South Bank; each with their own hired private security with a different colour and look of uniform, and set of equipment; and not routinely speaking with one another. While all crime (like politics) is local, it’s nonsensical that those teams do not speak, as if criminals stay in each locality.
Good practice
One question this begs is how to spread good practice, and who ought to gather it in the first place. The College of Policing (it has enough to do, trying to keep police up with the 21st century). BIDS? A central government department – the Home Office; or the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government? Another question is consistency of service, according to documented standards – for data protection, for example, for the sharing of intelligence. Joint working may be easier outside London, where even in sizeable towns, a BID or council procuring an on-street patrol – quite a niche service – may only have one or two security contractors to realistically choose from, whereas central London has more like ten, from the largest such as Mitie to the London-centric or public service specialist. The more competitors, the harder it is to get them to collaborate. Guarding firms at the best of times have a history of not contributing, at least financially, to business crime reduction partnership (BCRP) working.
How to scale?
The potential is that a thief or beggar may decide that the South Bank (say) has become too difficult to hang around in; he’ll try his luck around Marble Arch (say). How effective, and impressive as a deterrent, if a beggar who was moved on from, say, Charing Cross, went to beg an hour later in the West End, and thanks to shared working, a patroller while in a different colour uniform was able to tell the beggar that he’d been spoken to at Charing Cross and should move on again. The tech exists – numerous BCRP software is on the market, and facial recognition software is used ever more routinely by retailers. If anything, the police are catching up with use of biometrics by business.
Who?
The spreading of good practices and the very principle of partnership working nationally needs – who, what group in the lead? Businesses, or the security industry, or some new body? Police and crime commissioners? Politicians, and if so local, regional mayors or from the centre? Does it need those in the field simply to keep chipping away at joining up, by chance meetings or when moving job, until some tipping point is reached? Or is something more formal called for, such as an inspectorate or trouble-shooters, despatched where a town or part of a city is under-performing in terms of reported crime and perceptions of safety, or seconded to a district where BCRP working has never taken hold?
Photo by Mark Rowe; near Covent Garden.
