Brent Safer Neighbourhood Board held an online public meeting 5pm Wednesday 19
August 2020 with Borough Police Commander Roy Smith. These are summary notes of the meeting. The section on stop and search is of particular interest following concerns about the number of Section 60 orders in the borough.
SUMMARY (Unedited)
Gill Close, chair of Brent Safer Neighbourhood Board, welcomed over 100
people to the meeting at which police commander Roy Smith would be answering questions.
Roy Smith identified the main policing challenges in Brent as:
•violence and preventing it, which is the top priority and involves stop
and search, including section 60
•policingCOVID-19 for which they continue to adopt a gentle encouraging
approach
•austerity causing financial constraints on activity even though they
will continue to recruit officers.
People had raised 11 broad issues in questions sent in beforehand. The
main issues were drug dealing, street drinking and the associated antisocial
behaviour about which some residents felt that reporting to the police had no
effect and community intelligence should be better used.
Roy Smith said he was a big believer in the broken windows approach of
dealing with the small things before they got bigger. He wants officers to stop
and deal with low level antisocial behaviour when they are passing by. He asked
people to keep telling the police where crime and antisocial behaviour happens.
He said he had asked officers to provide a speedy response by text or email to
say what had been done in response to reports. He said that British Transport
Police already used this type of quick response to reports. Residents had asked
for anonymous ways to report these ongoing problems to the police and council.
They are provided at the end of this summary.
Gill Close asked how solutions to these long-term ongoing issues could
be better in future than they had been in the past as residents’ lives were
affected every day.
Roy Smith said that Safer Neighbourhood Teams were now fully staffed
following a big recruitment campaign and there were separate neighbourhood
tasking teams. These teams could be tasked by Inspector Becs Reeves, Brent’s
neighbourhoods inspector, to where needed, so police could tackle entrenched
problems. He said really good ‘design out crime’ officers were working closely
with the council on practical steps such as changing lights, fitting gates and
altering refuse collection frequency. Police were also using partnership
funding for safety initiatives, including £20000 to provide vulnerable
residents with free Ring doorbells containing video cameras.
One questioner said that when drug dealing was reported to police,
residents were told that an officer would come the following day, but this was
not an effective way to catch the dealers. He asked for council and police to
be more joined up about putting in new CCTV cameras to replace old broken ones
overlooking a quiet area where drug dealing took place near Fryent Park. The
council’s neighbourhood manager, Shirley Holmes, said she had requested a new
CCTV camera but other locations came higher on the priority list for the number
of cameras available. Roy Smith said the police and the council would follow
this up. Police and council would also look at ways of tasking officers to
respond to reports more effectively. He asked residents to provide specific
times, dates, locations, vehicle registration numbers and descriptions in their
reports.
A resident asked how vulnerable people could apply for one of the free
doorbells. Roy Smith said that he would ask the officer in charge to consult
with the council, safer neighbourhood teams and safer neighbourhood board on
ways to identify people who would benefit most.
A ward panel member said that a large number of new builds no longer
designed out crime but contained dark alleyways and car parks without gates,
although designing out crime had been a requirement in the past. Roy Smith said
that police would write a statement to use in the police response to all
planning applications for new developments. It would state that they must be
built to secured by design standards by avoiding such things as alleyways,
recessed doorways and unlocked car parks and by using white light instead of
sodium light. He also asked for links to be made between the council planning
department and police and for the designing out crime officer to attend the
partnership tasking meetings. Councillor Gaynor Lloyd said that some residents
of older properties were concerned about proposals for gating rear alleys which
might cut off access to their garage and the rear of their property. Roy Smith
said that there were other design options for existing buildings.
A questioner said he had sent police his own good quality CCTV image of
an intruder in his garden at 4am and received a standard reply that they did
not deal with antisocial behaviour. He asked why the image could not be kept on
file to help find burglars. Roy Smith said the response was unacceptable and
asked for the image to be emailed to his office so that it could be forwarded
to the right teams. He said he would also look at responses provided to victims
of crime as there is usually something police can do even if it is only
signposting to safety measures.
A questioner referred to what he had written in advance about noise late
at night in Gladstone Park car park and residents’ requests to lock it and for
the parks public spaces protection order to include noise. He said police and
council tell him to call each other. Roy Smith said that things should not be
sent back and forth between police and council. The issue would be looked at by
police and council then the written question would be responded to.
A representative of Harlesden Area Action referred to her question
submitted in advance asking for police to disrupt the behaviour in the open
drug market around Craven Park Road and St.Albans Road. Roy Smith said
Inspector Becs Reeves will work with the council on joint tasking of resources
in the area. Colin Wilderspin, the council’s head of community protection, said
that joint patrols were taking place and fixed penalty notices (FPN) and
criminal behaviour orders (CBO) were being used.
A representative from Barn Hill Conservation Group said that trail
motorbikes driving through Fryent Park fields and woods were a danger to
pedestrians and asked how they could be stopped. Roy Smith said he would look
at tasking for the roads and transport team, work with the council on measures
to prevent access, and find out if police might get some off-road motorbikes.
He asked residents to keep calling the police when they saw trail bikes in the
park.
A questioner said that lots of residents send images to the police using
Twitter @MetCC but the images do not reach the police. He asked for this to be
enabled. Roy Smith said that the Metropolitan Police was currently dealing with
this technical challenge as well as looking at ways to send images by WhatsApp.
He will obtain an update on when the capability to receive images will be
available.
A resident asked what the police were doing to persuade people away from
crime rather than just taking measures to prevent parties, drug dealing and
motorbikes in parks. Roy Smith said that police do support engagement activity
but are not the driving force behind it. Police work with charities, youth
organisations, football clubs and their independent advisory group and recently
provided a summer camp for young people held at a local school.
Roy Smith responded to a written question about the impact of upcoming
budget cuts, saying that there were proposals across London to increase the
number of safer neighbourhood team officers so Brent might be able to have some
town centre safer neighbourhood teams in addition to its current ward teams.
Roy Smith said that written comments on stop and search indicated people
were asking for more of it. He said it was a fine balance, must be fair and
explained well, and not unfairly target people disproportionately. It was fair
to say that police could do better at explaining what they were doing and why.
 |
| A recent Section 60 Notice |
A questioner said that many thought section 60 powers to use stop and
search were used disproportionately in certain communities. She said that more
engagement was needed with the community. She said that notice was not given
soon enough and only on Twitter, which few people saw.
Roy Smith said there is disproportionality in stop and search and in the
likelihood of being a victim of a homicide or a suspect, but stop and search
was not a solution to violent crime, the sources of which needed to be
addressed when children were at primary school age. Officers are taking weapons
off the street and saving lives but it is an imperfect solution and he welcomes
support on how to improve it. He said he spends a long time with members of the
black community who are more affected than anyone else, including victims of
shootings and stabbings. The problem is with how it is done and explained, but
not with doing it. He said the police need to learn through feedback.
Roy Smith said he would work with the council on the best mechanism to
get messaging about section 60s and quick spontaneous messages out quickly and
to large numbers in the relevant geographical areas. He wants feedback on stop
and search to make sure it is dignified and not criminalising young people. He
provided his office’s contact details for feedback but asked the community to
use their local ward officers as the primary point of contact.
Dr Angela Herbert, the chair of Brent police independent advisory group,
said positive engagement was a priority. Roy Smith said that, if police stop
and search someone and find nothing, they should apologise for the
inconvenience, although not for the search. A participant commented that an
apology is a must. Roy Smith said stop and search was not about racial
profiling and must be intelligence led. He wants community support where
officers are working legally. He said no-one has the right to prevent officers
from doing their work. He said officers do not want to use force, so want
people to cooperate calmly. Dr Angela Herbert said that the independent
advisory group was looking to roll out training to help the community to
respond safely.
Roy Smith thanked Roy Croasdaile, the chair of the Brent Stop and Search
Community Monitoring Group, for running a stop and search workshop at the
summer camp. He said it had provided a positive environment where young people
could talk to police. Roy Croasdaile then thanked the 50 young people who had
participated in stop and search scenarios in a role reversal with police. He
said they had exercised their judgement very well and asked important
questions, and that police officers had engaged enthusiastically with role
reversal. The police press release about the workshop is HERE . Roy
Croasdaile said that stop and search issues remaining were the speed of
complaint resolution, disproportionality and equality impact assessment. Roy
Smith said police were having conversations with the monitoring group to bring
about improvement, including on complaints which he wanted to be able to deal
with in five working days.
Roy Smith repeated the principle stated by Sir Robert Peel when he
founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829 “The police are the public and the
public are the police”. He said the police are paid but we are all
demonstrating Peel’s principles by coming to this meeting, participating, being
in workshops and gathering information. He gave a massive thank you to the
community as the police could not do their work without community support. He
thanked everyone for their constructive criticism, for which there was not a
closed door.
Gill Close thanked Roy Smith for his responses to the questions and
concerns raised.
Gill Close explained how people could send in follow-up questions until
5pm on Friday 21 August. She said that all questions submitted for this meeting
would receive a reply from a police officer, and council officers would be
involved where council action had been asked about. She said a summary of the
meeting would be placed on Brent Council’s website and that, as part of its
police accountability role, the safer neighbourhood board would follow up on
the actions taken as a result of this meeting.
She said the safer neighbourhood board planned to hold more online
meetings in future. She also invited everyone to the safer neighbourhood board
public meeting from 7pm to 9pm on Thursday 18 March 2021 in the Grand Hall at
Brent Civic Centre where they can ask questions of the commander, the Brent
neighbourhoods inspector and the sergeant for their ward. She said that the
safer neighbourhood board was working on ways to involve more young people in
the public meeting and in ward panels, which set priorities for the ward
police.
Gill Close encouraged everyone to join OWL (Online Watch Link) to
receive secure messages on safety and crime from the police and council. She
said that all contact details offered at the meeting would be provided with the
summary of the meeting. She thanked everyone for attending and for sending in
questions. She said the safer neighbourhood board hoped that today’s meeting
and the individual responses questioners will receive will contribute to us all
living in a safer community and will sow seeds for increased communication
between the community and the local police.
Information on police contacts – follow this LINK (page 4)
Brent Stop and Search Monitoring Grouop on Facebook LINK
Stop-Watch Website of advice, articles and reports on Stop and Account, Stop and Search and more LINK
