Cllr Smith – Cracking down on crime
Cracking down on crime and anti-social behaviour remains one of the top priorities for Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council.
Crime is falling across the borough for the sixth year running and residents say that they are feeling safer. In fact, there have been 34,000 fewer crimes since 2002. But what is happening to make this possible?
Councils do not usually fund the Police but we understand that cracking down on crime is residents' number one concern so we have adopted it as a major council priority.
The borough's three town centres - Fulham, Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush - are now all covered by their own elite squad of council-funded beat bobbies. We now spend £1.8 million a year to pay for 60 extra officers who pound our town centre streets for many more hours than the standard Safer Neighbourhoods Teams. It is not rocket-science – more bobbies generate more arrests which results in safer streets.
Getting more police on the streets has been the centrepiece of our crime-fighting approach, but there are many other ways that we try to protect residents.
In March this year, I unveiled the 17 strong Neighbourhood Wardens team. At a cost of £700,000 a year, the team targets anti-social behaviour on the borough’s streets and in particular on housing estates. As well as providing an extra layer of enforcement, the wardens are also a friendly face for residents to raise concerns.
In addition, a major CCTV improvement programme is seeing the council spend more than £1 million on nearly 300 new cameras on housing estates. These cameras will act as another deterrent to criminals like drug dealers, robbers and vandals. The controlled drinking area has brought the number of street drinkers in the borough down by over 60 per cent and virtually all graffiti is now removed within 48 hours of being reported and gum and butt bins, coupled with £75 littering fines, are minimising the environment for crime.
The council also has a role to play in ensuring that pubs, clubs, off-licenses and other retailers are selling alcohol responsibly. We have a specialised licensing team that inspects premises, clamps down on those who flout the law and monitors hot-spots where drink-related crime exists. The council has even created a ‘saturation zone’ in Fulham so that no more pubs and bars can open in a direct response to complaints from residents about late-night crime and antisocial behaviour.
We have also encouraged civic-minded residents to set up Neighbourhood Watches across the borough and the concept has really exploded into life. In 2005 there were six schemes in H&F. Five years later, 214 streets are covered by a total of 154 groups.
On top of all this, the council also has 20 parks constabulary officers patrolling the borough’s 54 parks, open spaces and cemeteries with the team operating 365 days a year. Our annual crime summit continues to allow residents to help shape local policing on a street-by-street basis and really lets residents give the authorities a comprehensive picture of what is going-on on an ultra-local level. The council also continues to financially support the local Police in their specialist drugs operations – as drugs are known to be a major cause of many types of other crime.
Another area I would like to touch on is youth crime – and more particularly, youth on youth crime. Stabbings and shootings have become too regular a feature in newspapers across Britain over the past decade or so – not least because of the number involving children.
Thirteen young people have been murdered in London this year, nine by stabbings, although this trend looks down on the 30 teenagers who were murdered in the capital in 2008. The fatal stabbing of Fulham schoolboy Sofyen Belamouadden on March 25 at Victoria underground station has affected many people in the borough.
A great deal has been written and said about the root causes of youth crime. Of all the theories, all the things that have been written on this subject – the most compelling in my mind is the breakdown of society. There has been proven to be a direct link between broken homes – in particular fatherlessness and a lack of role models – and the educational under-achievement and lack of aspiration that can lead to crime.
So a fundamental challenge is to find a way to help families stay together – and build a borough of opportunity for all. Of course, that is not the only factor – and there is no doubt that other factors are undermining parents and teachers. For example, the music industry which allows rap, hip-hop and R&B music onto the market with lyrics that explicitly popularises gangs, guns and the degradation of women. Or the film and video game houses, whose products are available to young people, with content of extreme, casual and callous violence with no social or moral counterbalance. So a further challenge is how to bring about greater social responsibility among those industries that are having a damaging affect. Lenient sentences in court and gang culture all feed into the problem.
However, despite these problems that are faced by all communities in Britain, the reality is that Hammersmith & Fulham is getting safer and there is only so much council’s can do on their own under the current structures.
Clearly, there is more to do and we will continue to work on your behalf to make the borough as safe as possible.
Cllr Greg Smith
Cabinet Member for Residents’ Services
