Well meaning Police?

26 June 2013 Boris closed the East Dulwich Police Station. This brought to an end our 10+ years campaign to save it. We stopped Labour Ken and Val Shawcross closing it. But Boris within weeks of promising not to close it and many other police station did the most massive U-turn.

The Met Police have used these closures to undertake a massive centralisation programme. We no longer have a dedicated team of 8 Police officers based in East Dulwich sharing cover with a similar team for Village ward. It worked well. Instead they’ve amalgamated 5 such teams and based them in Camberwell.

At last week’s Dulwich Community Council the Inspector in charge presented findings from a rudimentary time and motion study.

It showed:

–          16% of officer time is now wasted spent travelling, when assigned to Dulwich work, between Dulwich and Camberwell.

–          16% equates to the loss of 4 police officers from College, Village and East Dulwich wards combined – half a Safer Neighbourhood Team.

–          Reported crime down – roughly by the amount of crime previously reported at the East Dulwich Police station.

We’ve also stopped having regular meetings with police officers in each ward to tell them what residents and businesses are concerned about.

My experiences of Southwark and Met Police is that they could do with some real operational expertise applied to properly plan how they operate. It currently looks and feels as well meaning at best.

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