Putney's better with Labour

Putney Police: better with Labour

My priorities for Putney: Policing

It's taken Labour a decade to sort out the huge cuts in police numbers Wandsworth endured under the last Tory government.

In 1993 Wandsworth had 693 police officers. By the time the Tories were defeated and their cuts had worked through the system in 2000 we were left with only 568. Today, Wandsworth has 615 full police officers, 50 special constables and 121 police community support officers - a total of 786.

And remember, in 1997 we had zero PCSOs - the officers who've allowed us to reintroduce bobbies on the beat, building the vital links and trust with the community that we gradually lost in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They've been introduced by Labour, funded by Labour and backed by Labour: usually in the face of derision and a refusal to vote for funding them from the Conservatives.

What's the result of all those extra police officers? Well, Putney is one of the safest areas in London. Crime is down and falling. In all bar one of our six council wards crime is below - significantly below - the London average. In four it's below the borough average.

We do have problems, and that's why I've made six policing pledges that I'll focus attention on as your MP.

Read those pledges here

Read the news articles I've written on this website about policing and crime issues here

Monitor our local crime figures here

Check what I say about police numbers is true by visiting the Tory-controlled Metropolitan Police Authority website here.

What does it all mean?

Every month since the summer of 2007 I've been reporting the Metropolitan Police's ward-by-ward crime figures for the Putney constituency - February 2010's are above and again show decent results, especially in Roehampton where two months of small increases have been turned around.

But what do those numbers actually mean? Well, let's take burglary. In Southfields, the February burglary rate was 7.7 crimes per 1,000 of the population. Now, the population of Southfields is about 13,000 people, give or take - so multiply the 7.7 by 13 and you get 100.1 incidents over the twelve months to February; that's just over eight reported burglaries in Southfields a month.

Eight burglaries a month is eight too many of a particularly unpleasant, invasive crime, but it does put in perspective its relatively low scale locally.

And at the end of the scale, you begin to understand why I'm so appalled by the scale of crime in Putney town centre - Thamesfield ward. Let's repeat the equation above in respect of theft and handling in Thamesfield: 75.5 crimes per thousand, multiplied by 13 (the ward's population) and you get almost 982 crimes a year, 82 every month, 19 a week, week in, week out - happening in our town centre. And these are town centre crimes - and that's before you get to what might be called "residential backstreet crimes" - they relate solely to pickpocketing, stealing, shoplifting.

It's why I've made tackling town centre crime once and for all one of my five policing pledges at the general election.

The choice on anti-social behaviour

Tories cut Wandsworth Police by 6%

When the reports started to emerge last year about the sheer scale of the Conservatives' cuts to policing in London, as reported by the Evening Standard, the numbers were so vast that it was hard to appreciate what they mean for areas like ours.

But at this week's Crime and Disorder Partnership meeting, Borough Police Commander Stewart Low revealed for the first time what those cuts mean for Putney: a 6% cut in the Wandsworth police force budget this coming year.

Commendably, our police leadership is guaranteeing no cuts in our safer neighbourhood police teams: something that may be achievable for one year, but as Conservative cuts keep being made year-in, year-out (as they promise), this will become untenable.

Let's just put in context what a 6% cut represents. 6% is the equivalent of 37 police officers. It's not a small cut: it's a deep cut that attacks the effectiveness of our local police, who have delivered big falls in crime throughout Putney.

This is how the Conservatives reward success. It's exactly what they did in the 1990s when they were last in charge of police funding. If you vote the Conservatives into power later this year, they'll keep doing it.

My policing priorities for Putney

The Real Policing Pledge is a campaign by the Police Federation of England & Wales (the grassroots police officers' representative body) to ensure that our MPs after the next election are committed to strengthening the thin blue line.

As you can see above, I'm fully signed-up to the Real Policing Pledge. Putney's Conservative MP is not - odd given she talks up her concern about this critical local issue.

I've been deeply critical of the lies and scaremongering on crime the Conservatives have been guilty on with this issue. It isn't the sort of leadership I'll provide Putney with as your MP. So, as well as signing the Real Policing Pledge, I have five key priorities that I'll spend my first term of office on.

1. Cutting street crime in Putney town centre

Street crime like pickpocketing and shoplifting is the main reason why crime in Thamesfield ward is unacceptably high, and the Conservatives in Putney refuse to get to grips with the problem. I want town centre wardens introduced to Putney High Street - wardens who, when they were introduced in Clapham Junction and Tooting town centres cut street crime by a third. Town centre wardens will free up our Police Safer Neighbourhood team to tackle crime in the rest of Thamesfield ward.

2. Cutting violent crime in Roehampton

Violent crime is to Roehampton what town-centre crime is to Thamesfield, and even though the police have made huge strides to reduce crime in Roehampton, violent crime here remains at unacceptable levels. That means providing more facilities and opportunities for young people in Roehampton: youth clubs and activities that Regenerate do such excellent work on for example - and employment opportunities like the King's head Hotel plan the Conservatives want to prevent.

3. Far tougher action on criminal damage

That means Wandsworth opting in to Labour government schemes like community payback where offenders convicted of less serious offences are forced to give back to the community they've damaged. And far more high-profile use of Labour schemes like Roehampton Community Court. Criminal damage matters because the evidence from right across the developed world shows that vandalised, neglected areas are far more likely to attract other forms of crime and also engender greater fear of crime among residents. There's no excuse for this form of crime, and we can do so much more to tackle it locally.

4. Protecting our Safer Neighbourhood teams

The verdict from the community is in - and it is that our Labour-introduced Safer Neighbourhood police teams have been a big success: putting police back on the beat throughout the week, rebuilding the connection between people and their local bobby on the beat, helping cut crime by having the more visible deterrent presence in our communities, and making the police far more accountable to the public. The Conservatives have already started cutting police numbers in London and we simply cannot go back to the Tory days of more than 100 fewer officers in Wandsworth than we now have. Police are worth paying for. And I will always support the implementation in full of police pay settlements negotiated by the independent pay review body.

5. Honest crime figures you can have confidence in

I've been genuinely shocked at the way Putney's Conservative MP has consistently misreported what's really happening with crime in our area. Claiming police numbers are down when they were up; claiming crime is up when it's down and staying silent when the Mayor of London starts cutting police numbers just because he's a member of her party - all this shows a complete lack of integrity.

I've been reporting the real crime figures here on my website since the summer of 2007 - from figures figures provided by the Metropolitan Police. I will never misrepresent them. I will always source my claims. And you know you can rely on that promise because if I was solely about painting unrealistically optimistic pictures on crime I wouldn't have spent the first three of my pledges above discussing the three big crime problems we still have in Putney.

Here are the January crime stats for the six Putney wards: as usual figures in red show the crime rate has increased since the previous month; green figures show either a fall or no change from the previous figures.

Even the Tory council shuns Greening's crime claims

This is the front page of a report going to tonight's council committee that deals with policing and community safety issues. You can read the full report here.

And there you have it: Putney and Roehampton CONSISTENTLY has the lowest crime of anywhere in the borough, long term trends show SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS, and residential burglary is SHOWING A DECREASE.

And here's a chart from that same report that proves it:


I wonder if these facts, which even the Conservative council can't avoid admitting, will stop Putney's Tory MP from claiming that burglaries are up?

Dogs bark, cats meow and Tories lie about crime

I've been extremely critical of Putney's Conservative MP for making blatantly untrue claims about burglaries being up when they're down, and police numbers locally being down when they're up.

It's political game-playing of the most contemptible kind and it can't be excused by her misunderstanding the figures: it's a quite deliberate attempt by the Conservatives to scare you about the safety of our local area.

Well, we've now seen that lying about crime and policing is not just limited to Putney Conservatives: Tory Home Office spokesman Chris Grayling has been exposed for his misleading use of national statistics on crime - after the national statistician, the Association of Chief Police Officers and even former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith criticised the way he was spinning the figures.

Every time the Conservatives behave like this it becomes ever more obvious that it's not Britain that's broken - it's the Conservative Party, becoming so desperate to regain power that they'll tell absolutely any lie they think will get them there.

The change we see

These are some of the hundreds of new and revamped facilities around the country completed by Labour since we were elected. They're from right around the country, but here in Putney we:

• Rebuilt Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton
• Upgraded doctors and dentists' surgeries like the one in Augustus Road
• Are currently upgrading the pool at Southfields Community College;
• Built the Brandlehow Nursery extension
• Are about to fund a major refit of Elliott School and the expansion of Hotham Primary School
• Funded the expansion of South Thames College on their central Wandsworth campus
• Expanded Roehampton University

..Among other important local investments in our community. Continuing investment in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields depends on who wins the general election - and that depends on who you vote for locally. The Tories will cut these building schemes substantially. Labour has a track record of delivering for our area.

A great idea worth copying in Putney

One of the reasons Labour created Safer Neighbourhood Police teams a few years ago was because Londoners so lamented the gradual loss, over years, of bobbies on the beat: a police officer who everyone knew and respected.

In Bexley, their Safer Neighbourhood team have decided to take the next step towards restoring that bobby-on-the-beat link by setting themselves a challenging target of calling on every home in the borough over the next year or so.

I'd like to see the same thing done here in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields. I've written before about how most areas see their police teams regularly but some feel they aren't getting the attention they deserve. This is a way to tackle that, to build links and restore the link we lost with the police some time in the seventies and eighties.

Shouldn't the police be tackling crime rather than chatting to residents? There's something to that, but my view is that the police will achieve more in the medium and long term by building those links; when people can go up to a police officer they know and talk to him or her in confidence. Because the key to cracking crime is having the local network that police can go to and trust - and who in turn can trust their police.

I'd like Putney, Roehampton and Southfields police to take up the Bexley idea and run with it. They don't need a timetable; just set themselves the objective and get on with it.

And, incidentally, it's not exactly a terrible idea for local representatives: councillors and MPs - to do the same, and set themselves a target of calling on every household in their area at least once during their term of office.

December's crime figures

The December crime figures show crime across all categories, and in five of Putney's six wards down again - figures in line with the borough and London average.

I've written before about the Conservative MP's dishonesty when she claims that burglaries in Putney are on the rise - and this latest set of figures again shows that she's simply not telling the true story. Burglaries in Southfields, Thamesfield and West Hill are down somewhat; they're up very slightly in East Putney, Roehampton and West Putney - but the trend remains downward in Wandsworth borough and London.

What I'd like the police to focus more on in the coming year is having higher visibility right across Putney, not just in particular parts of wards. I've come across concerns in Southfields, for example, that their Safer Neighbourhood Police - who do an excellent job - aren't seen enough along Merton Road. In part, that's because they're focussing on the shopping areas around Replingham Road and central Wandsworth where crimes like robbery will be highest - and it's of course right that police resources go where the need is greatest. But a regular patrol and an occasional focus on areas like Merton Road and the Earlsfield end of Southfields would be welcomed by residents in this part of the ward.

New Met Police crime leaflet

New Putney Pensioner out now

You can read the new edition here.

November crime stats

I can't say that the crime figures for November bring much seasonal cheer: although not by much crime is up more than it's down. I'm somewhat concerned by the rise in theft and handling offences, which are up in every part of the constituency except East Putney.

Theft and handling is a particular problem in town centres, which is why Thamesfield - which covers Putney High Street - in particular has such a high crime rate. Likewise, Southfields includes the Southside shopping centre. That said, this type of offence is significantly less likely to occur in most of the constituency than in the borough as a whole, or indeed London.

In fact compare the London average against the Putney council wards and you'll see that the majority of our area does a lot, lot better than the capital as a whole, so even in a - hopefully - aberrant month like November, we're still one of the safer parts of our city.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

That's the title of a book written by US Senator Al Franken on the way some politicians tend to behave when campaigning.

I mention it because at the weekend I came across a Conservative leaflet that has been put about in West Hill ward. Just consider the key claims it contains:

The Tory MP is campaigning to cut the "rising number of burglaries across, Putney, Roehampton & Southfields"

I thought we'd comprehensively debunked this blatant lie only a few days ago - burglaries are down on every single measure in every single Putney council ward - but no, the Conservatives press ahead with the lie presumably in the hope that they can scaremonger their way to victory.

The Tories then claim that Putney now has "fewer arresting officers in Wandsworth than 1997". Again, official figures show the opposite. Today we have 617 Police officers (that's excluding Community Safety Officers) in Wandsworth according to the Conservative-run Metropolitan Police Authority. In 1997 we had 596. 617 is more than 596. So again, the Conservatives are lying.

And the lies don't stop there. Despite getting their fingers burnt when they falsely claimed that business rates in Roehampton were on the rise - when the fact is that the vast majority of Roehampton businesses are about to get their rates cut, they've done exactly the same thing in West Hill.

I count 33 West Hill businesses that are having their rates cut - and that includes EVERY business in the four main West Hill ward shopping parades: Beaumont Road, Montfort Place, Wimbledon Park Road and Inner Park Road. Only 9 face increases. The source of my figures? Conservative-run Wandsworth Council. 33 down, 9 up. So another Conservative lie.

Here's the thing: a confident, outgoing and self-assured party that believes it has the facts on its side wouldn't have any need to misdirect, mislead, scaremonger or - yes - lie. Political parties only employ these tactics when they're behind, losing, on the wrong side of the facts or simply not smart enough to tell the truth.

The biggest compliment the Conservatives can pay to my campaign - and the loudest message they send to you, the voters, is when they lie. Because it shows they've nothing positive - nothing honest to say to Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

Britain's not broken. The Conservative Party is.

What price security?

Kimpton House in Fontley Way on the Alton estate is, unfortunately, a greater focus for anti-social behaviour and crime than some of the others. One of the reasons for this is that, alone among the six Fontley Way blocks, it doesn't have a controlled entry system.

And the reason that's the case is that, again alone among the Fontley Way blocks, Kimpton House contains a (big) majority of leaseholders who effectively hold a veto over plans to make such changes because they are liable for the costs of the work. 31 of the 45 flats here have been sold off by the council - not only high for the Alton but strange given that the average for the other Fontley blocks is 8. Such quirks, incidentally, don't happen by accident - it was Conservative policy to target blocks for sell-offs right across Wandsworth, and this is one of the consequences.

I've just had an email from the council telling me that they're going to try and persuade Kimpton House to vote for controlled entry in the New Year. But they go on to tell me that the cost of such work will saddle leaseholders with £1,500 bills.

Just think about that for a minute. £1,500 per flat. 45 flats. £67,500 in total. To fit some secure doors and provide entryphones in each flat. Is it any wonder that the leaseholders vote "no" when presented with such absurdly inflated costs by the Conservatives?

Council contractors are notorious for thinking that council funded contracts are cash cows where over the top quotes can be submitted with impunity: in one case a quote to provide a few flowerbaskets came back at more than £1,000 per basket - but was eventually whittled down to less than £200 - including maintenance costs!

For £67,500, I'd expect gold-plated doors and entryphone systems. Well, not quite, but you get the point. Kimpton House deserves greater security of the sort the other Fontley Way blocks have benefited from for years. They could get it; but not while the Conservatives keep trying to impose extortionate charges on leaseholders.

Burglaries in Putney: the FACTS

Putney's Conservative MP has been at it again: scaremongering about burglaries in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields in her latest Putney SW15 report - exactly the way she did a few months ago in the same column.

I've taken a while to respond to her distortions because I wanted to wait for the Metropolitan Police to publish their October crime figures before debunking - again - Miss Greening's claims.

But the table above shows that in October, compared to the month before, in only two out of six Putney wards was the burglary rate up at all - by less than half of one percent in both cases. In contrast, burglary fell by significantly more in Roehampton and Thamesfield. Burglaries neither increased nor reduced in Southfields or West Hill.

Overall, yet again, burglary fell - it didn't rise as Miss Greening claimed.

And without blinding you with statistics, the following table shows just how significantly better we are doing in Putney on burglary - the change over 12 months as opposed to just the one month snapshot above. In every single Putney ward, burglaries are down: in the cases of Roehampton, Thamesfield and West Hill down massively:



Why is Miss Greening claiming one thing when the facts show the opposite? I think I understand how she's got it so wrong: burglaries in the rest of the borough, especially Battersea, are up, and the police may have briefed her about borough trends rather than Putney's. But she's paid to know her facts about Putney - and self-evidently she does not.

Don't take my word for it. Here is the Metropolitan Police's local crime database, open to anyone to check for themselves. Roll your mouse over any of the Putney wards - the six areas on the left of the map of the borough, and the crime figures for each appears on the right. Remember that these are figures provided by the Met Police themselves. And the Met reports to Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, not the Labour government.

We should all remain vigilant about crime and we can never have too many cautionary messages on preventing burglaries. But we can certainly do without mistruths and scaremongering from a politician on the prowl for votes. Here are the overall crime stats for October:

Policing the Lennox

Another Roehampton story in last week's Wandsworth Guardian (along with the collapse of the Conservatives' Danebury Avenue demolition plans) was another success story for local policing.

Getting more police resources focussed on the Lennox estate, at the top of Priory Lane, has been something I've been working on for months - I reported on it in this special edition of the Putney Paper and it was an issue mentioned throughout my campaign week on the estate this spring. It's also an issue about which I know the local residents association have been very vocal and active.

I've been in touch with local residents on the estate who've been reporting worries about crime and anti-social behaviourto me, putting them in touch with police officers and making sure their concerns are taken seriously.

Gun crime in our area is fortunately very, very rare. When it occurs it is often linked to the twin problems of gangs and drugs. Roehampton's Police have taken it seriously and as a result, this incident on the Lennox has been tackled; and the estate can return to being a decent place to live.

September crime

Not that much to say about the crime figures for September: most of the statistics for each ward moved only very slightly up or down.

The main exception was in Southfields, which saw another fall in crime outside what in polling terms would be called a margin of error. Drugs offences also declined.

Here's the table - as usual, red numbers indicate an increase on the previous month's figure; green indicates the number stayed the same or fell.

Labour: building strong and fair communities

The facts on anti social behaviour action

We often hear from the Conservatives and some aspects of the media that Labour action on anti-social behaviour isn't tough in enough. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats and another section of the media say we've introduced too much anti-social behaviour legislation and we should be repealing it because it's too draconian.

Both are utterly wrong: the Liberal Democrats in failing to comprehend the devastating impact sustained anti-social behaviour can have and the Tories for saying what we're doing isn't working. This table shows just how wrong they are:



Two thirds of offenders who've gone through anti-social behaviour justice never reoffend. That rises to more than four fifths if they reoffend once. And just 7% of those who have to be disciplined three times re-offend: 93% do not. From some of the reporting of this issue, you'd think the numbers were the other way round. And this is how action on anti-social behaviour is playing out in Wandsworth:



The political debate around anti-social behaviour should focus on what to do about this 7%, but I think it's long overdue to record the success alongside that discussion.

Since 1997, all crime - as measured by the British Crime Survey - has fallen by 36 per cent. Domestic burglary is down 54 per cent; vehicle-related thefts down 57 per cent; household crimes are down 36 per cent and violent crimes down 41 per cent.

There's a lot of evidence that people recognise that their own area has become safer but don't believe the same is true nationwide. That is down to the media and to the Conservatives talking down our country. Maybe, just maybe, we need to recognise that Britain is much safer now than it was in 1997. And that's down to Labour.

More on the Conservative cuts to the police

Summer violent crimes underline why it's folly to cut police numbers

If you've been at all aware of the spate of violent crimes that have afflicted Wandsworth borough - but with one exception not our part of it - in the past three or four weeks, I'm sure you'll have been as shocked as I have.

The arson attack on the Masud family that cost the lives of two sisters in Lessingham Avenue in Tooting, and seriously injured other members of that family was appalling. But it seemed to unleash a wave of craziness including two attacks, one fatal, on muslims on their way from mosque in Tooting. that included five shootings - including one (fortunately not fatal) in Whitlock Drive in West Hill, and culminated in a seemingly unprovoked attack in Lambeth Cemetery, off Garratt Lane, when a 19-year old was stabbed in the face and beaten up by two thugs this week.

These events are so shocking because they are so unusual for our part of London and because they have happened with such concentrated intensity in a short space of time.

My point in talking about them is not to scare you; to make you think that Putney, Roehampton and Southfields are less safe than they are - and ours remain among the safest parts of our capital city.

But they do show, yet again, that even though crime has fallen dramatically in the last ten years - here, across London and nationally, the need for our police is undiminished. In fact, when times are tough and unemployment rising, the need for police to prevent crime from following suit is even greater.

The crimes I mentioned above had nothing to do with the economy - they were carried out, in the main it seems, by mindless thugs who think violence makes them look impressive or intimidating to others and gives them a daunting reputation. But whatever the reasons, they happened, and while police are making arrests and those convicted will hopefully go to prison we need more police not fewer.

There is, I'm afraid, a political bottom line here because police numbers are a political issue. The Conservatives are already systematically setting about cutting police numbers. They started as soon as Boris Johnson won the London Mayoralty: £472 million of cuts announced last year and, as I covered a few days ago a further 400 police officers "deleted" in coming months. And this just as we've finally restored Police and Community Support Officer numbers above 700 for the first time since 1990.

Those aren't backroom jobs that are going - they're frontline police officers not being replaced when they retire. And it will have an impact on crime locally. That's the reality of a political choice by politicians that cut blindly and recklessly simply because they want to show they can take "tough" decisions.

It doesn't. It has consequences: the wrecked lives of the families of the victims. Is that a price worth paying? Certainly not.

My response on prisoner voting rights

A few days ago I flagged up the Ministry of Justice consultation on prisoner voting rights, and promised to publish my own views.

Here they are.

All the answers I give in this response come a distant second to my fundamental view that prisoners should not be given the vote - I make that point repeatedly throughout the response but hopefully emphatically enough on the first two pages.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Wandsworth's Conservative Council and I appear to agree on the fundamentals here. I believe that a united, cross-party response is the best way of encouraging the Ministry to stand up to Europe on this issue that really doesn't have anything to do with the European Union as far as I can see.

Deja vu

When people like me make the case that the Conservatives have learnt absolutely nothing and have changed absolutely nothing about themselves, it's news like this that informs that case.

It has taken a decade - and then some - of Labour government to bring our police numbers locally back to the levels they were before the last Conservative government slashed them. Yes, those cuts took place over ten years ago - but that doesn't mean they didn't happen, that it wasn't intentional and that it didn't do damage.

And we've repaired that damage in the face of Tory claims that crime is rising when it is falling, and that Britain is somehow comparable to the most crime-scarred cities in the US. We've even achieved it despite the Conservatives claiming for years in opposition that somehow Labour has cut police - a blatant falsehood evident to all in the graphic below.

Putney's Conservative MP is party to this deception. She has claimed to be outraged at supposed Labour cuts in police numbers in Putney. If that outrage was sincere, albeit misguided, where is her condemnation of this actual, real cut in Wandsworth police numbers by the Conservative Mayor of London?

So just as Labour has finally repaired the damage done by Michael Howard the Tories have started reducing police numbers all over again. Deja vu.

And the Tories say it's just the start. They talk about wanting to "cut to the bone" - not my words, but those of the Conservative Deputy Mayor for Policing, Kit Malthouse.

In Wandsworth it means losing 15 police officers.

I know some are turned off when those of us in politics criticise our opponents rather than simply talking about the things we're for. But politics is about making choices: and that means giving you the context of those choices so you are best able to make them.

Here is a clear demonstration that politicians aren't all the same. Labour has returned police to Putney's streets - and Putney is one of the safest parts of London as a result. Fact.

The Conservatives reduced police numbers in our borough, and are now embarking on doing so again. Labour has brought police numbers back up again. Fact

Labour introduced Safer Neighbourhood Police teams - the Conservatives voted against paying for them. Fact

The Conservatives control the purse strings in London now. They run the London mayoralty and control the majority of London councils. It their choice to cut the police or cut elsewhere, or cut the Mayoral tax precept rather than keeping a strong police presence on our streets. The Evening Standard story shows the choice they've made.

Soon it will be your choice: to back these Conservative cuts or to vote for those of us who've invested in the police. It's not a simple, easy choice, but it is a straightforward one.

My campaign to make Danebury Avenue an alcohol-free zone

Recently I wrote to the Council's Chief Executive and the Chief Superintendent of Wandsworth Police to urge them to take action on one of the biggest concerns I come across on the Alton estate: the impact of street drinkers on the Danebury Avenue area.

I want to see an alcohol exclusion zone introduced in this bit of Roehampton that bans the drinking of alcohol in public. Your rights to buy alcohol would be unaltered. At present Roehampton's Safer Neighbourhood Police has the power to move on street drinkers who hang around outside the library and post office in Danebury Avenue pretty much all day.

An alcohol exclusion zone would give the police the power to confiscate and pour away any alcoholic drinks - and faced with this prospect I suspect the drinkers would soon disappear.

Tackling the problem of street drinkers in Danebury Avenue is really important according to local residents and businesses. It is the biggest issue raised with me by Roehampton residents. And hopefully with that problem tackled, the police can focus more on some of the other problems. That's why I'm backing an alcohol exclusion zone and why I hope the council - which has to set the zone up, and the police - who have to enforce it, will get behind my campaign.

Here's the letter I sent to the Council Chief Executive yesterday (click on the image for a larger version):

Vote to give some cash back

Last month I reported on the Community Cashback scheme, set up by the Labour Government to return the ill-gotten proceeds of crime back to the communities damaged by it.

This month, the Criminal Justice Service is inviting you to vote for which schemes you think are most deserving of money from this scheme.

Click here if you'd like to vote - or to find out more about some of the ways criminals are giving back to their community.

You have until 5pm on September 18th to cast your vote.

Roehampton's thin blue line

I was out and about in Roehampton yesterday, talking to residents and businesses supportive of my campaign to create an alcohol-free zone in Danebury Avenue. And I then went for a spot of lunch at the Telegraph Pub on Putney Heath.

During my three hours around Roehampton I came across three separate Safer Neighbourhood Police patrols out on foot or on mountain bikes. On a normal, average Saturday in the middle of the holiday season.

I just wanted to note this just to counter all the claims that get bandied around about never seeing the police around; that our Safer Neighbourhood teams don't make a contribution to the communities they serve; the usual talking down Putney that we get incessantly from the Conservatives.

Britain's not broken. The Safer Neighbourhood Team makes a major contribution to the community. Crime is falling. Roehampton is very, very much safer. That's the real news. I was just really pleased to witness this for myself yesterday.

Giving prisoners the vote - have your say

The government is currently consulting on whether to give certain categories of prisoner the right to vote. This follows a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that stated that the government was wrong to apply a blanket ban on voting to prisoners.

My view, which I set out last year, is that the ECtHR was completely wrong in this ruling. The franchise is a right, but so too is liberty and in committing a crime both are surrendered.

Granting prisoners the vote will not, in my view, encourage good behaviour or civic responsibility - I suspect the overwhelming majority of prisoners are completely indifferent as to whether they can vote during their incarceration. But even if this is not the case and prisoners are, in fact, desperate to vote isn't it the case that regaining the franchise might act as a spur to going straight on completion of their sentence?

Beyond the principle of whether prisoners should retain the right to vote, there are also a number of very practical problems involved in allowing prisoners the vote - because even the ECtHR believes that some crimes are so serious that voting rights should be forfeit.

So where do you draw the line: by length of sentence or type of crime? Are pickpockets worthy of the vote but burglars not? What if prisoners who have committed identical crimes are given different sentences through the vagaries of judicial independence allowing one to vote but not the other? Where should prisoners be allowed to register to vote? If en-masse at big prisons like Wandsworth inmates could end up determining who represents law-abiding citizens, which to many - myself included - would be unacceptable. And can we really have confidence that prisoners, who for obvious reasons would not be able to turn up in person at their local polling station, would be able to cast a postal vote free from tampering, interference or harassment?

Again, my view is clear: we should not even attempt to open this pandora's box, or poke this hornet's nest. Because as sure as eggs are eggs a halfway house won't stop the legal challenges; they'll use the leeway they've been given to chip further and further away until some of this country's most notorious criminals - the likes of Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Brady and Ian Huntley - get the franchise too.

This is plain and simply wrong.

I've had sight of the Conservative council's draft submission on this and, I'm pleased to say, this is an issue we pretty much see eye-to-eye on.

I'll be publishing my response to the consultation shortly, but in the meantime if you'd like to comment visit the Ministry of Justice website where you can download more information on the issues and a pro-forma for responding. You have until 29 September to get your comments in.

The Wire

I came across this blog post on the internet a couple of days ago regarding the crass, headline-chasing remarks by Conservative MP Chris Grayling - who if the Tories win the election will be Home Secretary and someone who seems most unlikely to have the box sets of this excellent TV series in his collection.

It is a well written critique that exposes how thoroughly ridiculous and self-serving Grayling's outburst was.



by John Owens

Two figures huddle over a man, wrapping him in cellophane ready to be sealed in an abandoned house. His body is just one of many that fill the numerous empty buildings in the area, people killed for a bad look or a bad word. The police, already in over their heads with murders, would rather not find out- he's just another statistic, no one important.

This is modern life in Britain. Broken Britain. Under Labour. Except, of course, it's not. It's a scene from series four of The Wire. Which is set in Baltimore. Which has a murder rate of 36.9 per 100,000. The average murder rate in britain is 1.4 per 100,000 .

Shadow Home secretary Chris Grayling, who today made a speech in which he claimed that violence in society had become "a norm and not an exception" and talked of "when The Wire comes to Britain?s streets" , seemed to like the soundbite enough to gloss over these minor disparities. Talking of time spent in Moss Side, a notoriously rough part of Manchester, he described how "urban warfare", generated by gang culture, was a daily fact of life for residents in the area.

Detective Superintendent Darren Shenton, who heads Manchester Police's anti-gang crime unit, was nonplussed by the assertion, labelling the term urban warfare "sensationalistic" . Unimpressed that his patch was being used by Grayling to ramp up hysteria, he also pointed out that gang-related shootings had plummeted by 82% on the previous year's figures. A man armed with the facts to prove that the police's strategy was actually working, Shenton was right to speak up.

I'm not going to dispute that places like Moss Side are blighted by a dangerous gang culture. Or that the ever-intertwined issues of poverty, deprivation and violence need to be discussed. But Grayling's efforts at being down with the kids through the use of pop culture posturing does nothing to address these issues. Instead, it relies on conjuring up entirely inappropriate and ill-fitting images to misportray what Britain is like today.

Let's not forget that The Wire's gaze does not just fall upon the law enforcers and the law breakers. It extends to politicians, and shows a number unafraid of using a bit of hyperbole to stir up fear and score a few electoral points.

Grayling's speech makes sense within the overblown framework of the 'Broken Britain' campaign, which, as slogans go, is up there with 'War on Terror' for utter unhelpfulness, and though the comparison with Baltimore does not tell us much about what is really going on in terms of crime, it does point us towards why British residents are so much more terrified about this issue than they need to be.

Recent figures from the British Crime Survey show that though the number of homicides dropped by 17% in 2008/9 to a 20 year low, and crime decreased generally by 5%, 75% of the public believe there has been an increase in crime nationally. What is striking is that only 36% believe this increase in crime occurred locally- i.e the fear of crime is not a fear borne by a sense of personal threat, but by a general impression that someplace elsewhere things are getting worse.

People are not stupid. But as the soundbites like this one gather up they become difficult to ignore. Someplace elsewhere - let's call it Baltimore-on-Thames- becomes not just slightly more crime ridden, but the home of a crime pandemic that must be wiped out, no matter how harshly.
There always needs to be the drive to improve things. Complacency signals the death knell of effective democracy. But transposing the imagery of some of America?s toughest streets onto Britain and pretending it sticks just doesn't cut it. All that happens in a make-believe battle over imaginary crime statistics is that an increasingly paranoid society will accept, and endorse, increasingly paranoid behaviour by parties that, when in government, have to live up to their electoral talk.

The media are far from blameless and the Tories are hardly the only political party responsible of generating this atmosphere. But with the kind of poll lead they possess, you'd hope the Conservatives could avoid the damaging kind of point scoring that comes with cheap and tacky rhetoric like this.

King George's Park anti-social behaviour and July crime stats

Earlier this month I was contacted by residents of Argento Tower, the new high-rise block on Mapleton Road in Wandsworth which overlooks King George's Park (and most of south London).

They've experienced problems with groups of youths hanging around outside the block by the entrance to the park and in the children's play area, generally being rowdy but also intimidating residents and causing vandalism.

This case has exposed a flaw with current Safer Neighbourhood Policing policy in Wandsworth, because the disruption typically occurs in the early hours: 3-5am when the SNT teams don't work except in exceptional one-offs. Similarly, the council's Parks Constabulary don't patrol that late into the night.

So without SNTs and Parks Police patrolling the area, who is there to keep residents safe? Of course, the answer to an extent is that non-SNT police will be on duty and have been asked to keep an eye on this part of the constituency, but police numbers at night are always, rightly, much lower and so tackling a long-standing problem is not so easy.

I'll keep working with the residents of Argento Tower, the Parks Constabulary and the Southfields Safer Neighbourhood team until this problem is sorted out.

July's crime stats are above: there was a very small uptick in crime in these figures, mainly due to a spike in drugs offences following a police crackdown, and in theft and handling offences in the three big problem wards for these sorts of crimes: Roehampton, Southfields and Thamesfield.

But no sign of the "big increase" in burglaries Putney's Conservative MP complained about last month. Good news.

Our Safer Neighbourhood Police teams

I haven't published a full list of Putney's Safer Neighbourhood Police teams and their contact details for a while, so here it is.



East Putney and Putney Hill

• Sgt Matt Snowden
• PC Chris Cook
• PC Sandrine Tanghe
• PCSO Sandra Simoni
• PCSO Adam Lucioni
• PCSO Paul Henry

Contact them at:
Jubilee House, 230-232 Putney Bridge Road, SW15 2PD

tel: 020 8721 2433
mob: 07920 233 925
e-mail: eastputney.snt@met.police.uk

Roehampton, Putney Vale and Putney Heath

• Sgt Mark McLeavery
• PC Andrew Voong
• PC John Frame
• PCSO Lisa Burke
• PCSO Noel Perkins
• PCSO Nicky Edwardes
• PCSO Fuad Osman
• PCSO Marco Serrano
• PCSO Richard Ahronson

Contact them at:
37 Holybourne Avenue, SW15 4JE

tel: 020 8649 3551
mob: 07843 065 885
e-mail: roehampton.snt@met.police.uk



Southfields and Wandsworth Southside

• Sgt David Mepham
• PC Alison Edwards
• PC Gerry Wood
• PCSO Liam McLaughlin
• PCSO Alec Lewis
• PCSO David Fry

Contact them at:
146 Wandsworth High Street, SW18 4JJ

tel: 020 8247 8760
mob: 07920 233 931
e-mail: mailto:southfields.snt@met.police.uk



Thamesfield (Putney Riverside and town centre)

• Sgt Roger Chapple
• PC Alastair Adams
• PC Stuart Paton
• Special PC Mukesh Dev
• PCSO Douglas Cameron
• PCSO Sophie Wood

Contact them at:
Jubilee House, 230-232 Putney Bridge Road, SW15 2PD

tel: 020 8721 2434
mob: 07920 233 924
e-mail: thamesfield.snt@met.police.uk



West Hill and Wimbledon Park

• Acting Sgt Thomas Sharville
• PC Glen Cheal
• PC Peter Odelusi
• PCSO Benjamin Christmas
• PCSO Sarah Howard
• PCSO Jonathan Broadhead

Contact them at:
146 Wandsworth High Street, SW18 4JJ

tel: 020 8721 2430
mob: 07920 233 930
email: westhill.snt@met.police.uk



West Putney

• Acting Sgt Daniel Wray
• PC Paul James
• PC Stuart Baggaley
• PCSO Sharon Ellis
• PCSO Scott Thomas
• PCSO Jeff Cox

West Putney Police Office, 325 Tildesley Road, SW15 3BB
tel: 020 8721 2760
mob: 07747 757 590
e-mail: westputney.snt@met.police.uk