I should make it clear I’m from Police families. Both grandfathers were serving Police officers. One a Chief Super who in retirement chaired NARPO, the other an armed MoD Police officer who guarded the first UK atomic weapons. My father was born in a Police station, uncle chaired magistrate benches and I’m proud to still have all their policing medals and badges.

So I attended Southwark Police commander John Sutherland meeting to talk about his plans feeling supportive. We were told 24 June is the go live date for the Met Police “Local Policing model” with 4 clusters of local police teams. It’s effectively turning the clock back 20year to “Sector Policing” where centralised officers react to problems and chase their tails. Then the hugely successful safer team model with dedicated local teams came along with local bobbies.  Instead of a Safer Neighbourhood Team based in East Dulwich of 7 officers dedicated to our we will have less than two officers based in Camberwell.

The cross party councillor consensus is that we’re unlikely to see Police officers coming to Dulwich. When they do they’ll be in minibuses for a few hours and then called away. We expect almost all resources to never leave the Camberwell area. We’re even concerned at the future 999 response times.

This Policing retreat from Dulwich is based on a number of flawed concepts:

1. Low crime wards. The borough commander declared our area low crime. We’re low crime for inner London but have a higher crime rate than the English average.
2. Travelling time. The borough commander said it would only take 15-20 minutes to get from Camberwell to Dulwich. But basing them in Camberwell will see that area prioritised over Dulwich. When they ‘come over the hill’ south to Dulwich without a base then the slightest desk work or break will involve officers travelling back to Camberwell.
3. Increased hours of coverage. Centralising the SNT’s means they’ll be a Police officer on duty for more hours of the week. But as we don’t’ expect them to ‘come over the hill’ we’ll see the current hours in Dulwich reduce to next to nothing.
4. Named sergeant, PC, PCSO. Each ward will have name sgt. PC and PCSO. But as they’ll be based miles away this feels irrelevant.

A proposed Dulwich Police based was repeatedly rejected by the Police. It was repeatedly explained that councillors were proposing to completely pay for a new base if it made operational sense and would be used.

When asked what the prediction for policing hours effort each area would see I was told no such analysis had been done. We were told he didn’t have the spare operational hours to staff front counters. No operational impact assessment has been made. We were told the decision making process taken was more art than science.

We proposed that he consider five clusters adding one based in East Dulwich.

If you agree we need an East Dulwich Police base then please urgently sign our petition – http://eepurl.com/sPKmf