I’m sure everyone is as shocked as I am that a shooting incident has taken place in the Barry Road area of East Dulwich.
I understand the Police have launched a murder investigation.
At a suitable time my fellow East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas and Jonathan Mitchell and I will be talking to the Police understand what has happened and what the next steps are.
The East Dulwich councillors – Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself – helped establish a Crime Reduction fund in East Dulwich ward.
The latest actions this fund is taking is the purchase of 50 Alertboxes to create an electronic neighbourhood watch scheme in Crystal Palace Road between Whateley Road and Lordship Lane. This patch is a crime hotspot for East Dulwich as identified by the East Dulwich Police Safer Neighbourhood team. This enhanced electronic neighbourhood watch should see neighbours working more closely together.
Combined with SelectaDNA property marking kits the Police will engage residents to install Alertboxes and demonstrate how to use them. Installing the Alertboxes will magnify neighbours looking out for each other and we should see a dramatic reduction in reported crime.
The Government has decided to create 200 new bail hostels without publicy telling anyone where they are thinking of putting them. In secret they plan to talk with senior Police and council officers around the country.
Until very recently friends lived next to such a hostel. They had significant problems because mechanisms to manage it and the residents were not in place. The governments idea to create 200 new hostels without involving the public to ensure such governance mechanisms are in place is irresponsible.
Bail hostels are clearly needed. If they are ineffective offenders will be more likely to reoffend or not integrate fully into society. Without consulting with the public or having to follow the full planning process such checks and balances will not be in place.
Frankly such behaviour is soft on crime and the causes of crime. If you happen to come across one in East Dulwich please do get in touch so we can try and ensure it helps the residents rehabilitate and doesn’t cause local issues for residents.
The Beckley Foundation http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/ has produced a report about drugs policy. Its research states that alcohol and tobacco drugs are the most harmful in terms of numbers badly affected and the affects on users and society. Then other illegal drugs and lastly cannabis. They’ve suggested that most of the harm from cannabis is criminalising people, that criminals produce cannabis that is very high strength and more likely to cause physchosis as so much is now grown indoors under continuous lighting.
They will be proposing to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna during March about cannabis that “The damage done by prohibition is worse than from the substance itself”. Dynamite. They propose legalisation, taxation, controls in terms of adult use only and restricted strength. They don’t suggest its a healthy substance but that criminalising so many young people is more harmful than the ill effects it causes. Equally they point out roughly 80% of illegal drug use is of cannabis. That if cannabis use was legally controlled then crime enforcement could be concentrated on the 20% of ‘harder’ drugs. Imagine five times the resources targetted on heroin and cocaine crime.
Lambeth Police took a softly softly approach over cannabis which seemed to backfire as it attracted many people from outside Lambeth looking for drugs. That was bad news.
I don’t feel comfortable with this report and the challenges to my personal beliefs it presents. But the harm reported by keeping cannabis illegal feels compelling.
The Scientific evidence is such that the UK government should seriously investigate what would be best overall policy for fighting the harmful affects of drugs in the UK. Clearly the current ‘war on drugs’ feels lost and changing the game in some way is necessary.
While out and about in East Dulwich and Southwark generally I see and report and have removed a lot of graffiti. I make about 4 or 5 reports a week. You get to wondering how graffiti can be stopped permanently.
The East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors have funded over 1,000 SelectaDNA property marking kits. They retail at £47.95 each so huge investment in making East Dulwich a much harder target to burglars.
I wonder if the two technologies – spray cans and DNA style property marking kits could be combined. Register purchasers of spray cans. When graffiti found take sample of the paint and match it to the original registered purchaser. Who in their right mind would use spray cans for graffiti ever again.
National legislation would be required but what a different England would look like with no graffiti.
The Labour Government has backed down from it proposals for locally elected representatives on new Police boards.
We could have had the situation where locally elected councillors were seeking one thing from the Police and this conflicted with locally elected Police board representatives views.
I’m not clear what the new proposals are but hopefully they involve using already locally elected councillors.
The latest queens speach setting out the Labour governments legislative plans included the proposal of elected a few members of Plice authorities.
So the proposal is to elect a minority of Police authorities members. Police authorities, except in extreme circumstances, influence local Police but don’t control or direct them. So we’re being asked to vote for people who infuence an influencing board of the Police. We’re being asked to elect a minority of members of those boards. How will that change anything?
Ideally local Police should have priorities set politically by elected politicians. Those politicians should be on the hook for local taxation to pay for local Police. That is the way for real locally accountable poltiics of local Policing.
East Dulwich has had ZERO residential burglaries for two months. Zero residential burglary for two month. That is amazing.
In the summer East Dulwich councillors Richard Thomas, Jonathan Mitchell and myself agreed funding a crime prevention fund of nearly £50,000 from our bit of the annual Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding.
A large slab of this has been spent on over a 1,000 SelectaDNA (www.selectadna.co.uk) property marking kits. Aiming for every fifth home to have this property marking and homes that have been previously burgled or are in the proximty of homes that have been burgled. The East Dulwich Safer Neighbourhood Team has been helping residents install these marking kits. Every school in East Dulwich has been given these kits. We also purchased UV lights for the Police to quickly spot marked property.
Even business burglaries are down. Four over the last two months. Two were pubs. They have now been property marked and helping promote these property marking kits.
Fingers crossed zero burglaries continues. As all the property marking kits are used the chances of burglars being caught and successfully prosecuted rises making East Dulwich an increasingly inhospitable area for burglars.
If you live in East Dulwich and have’nt yet had a SelectaDNA property marking kit installed by the Police then please do get in touch with me.
The Met Police have introduced an alternative number to 999 for non emergency calls. Amazingly it the unmemorable 0300 123 1212.
Why could’nt they choose a memorable number – 0300 300 300 or something like that?
The end result of such a daft forgetable number will be lots of people still ringing 999.
At Mayoral question time London’s tory Mayor Boris Johnson was asked about the number of uniformed Police officers – the ones you see walking around on patrol or speeding past in cars.
He could’nt gurantee the current numbers would be increased or even remain the same!
He must at least occassionally read the papers, or speak to ordinary Londoners like you or me. He must know we’re worried about crime? Perhaps not.
Tell him if you think we need more Police in Southwark.
[if you look at his website you’ll see ads for books suggesting global warming is a swindle – hello Boris smell the coffee]