Agenda item

This report provides an update following the previous meeting focusing on work of the Law Enforcement Team between 01 March and 30 November 2023.

Mo Basith (LET Manager) presented the report which provided the Committee with an update following the last February meeting focusing on work of the Law Enforcement Team (LET) between 01 March and 30 November 2023. Detailed information and statistics including patrol data, the number of service requests, the types of work involved and so on were available in the report.

Mo Basith outlined the background of the LET’s Tasking Enforcement Group (TEG) set up with the Police. He said that the Council had always attended the BCU’s Tactical Coordination Group (TCG) held by the Police whilst the latter had been attending the monthly TEG meetings to resolve a lot of issues that arose in the borough.  Since last November, the TEG meetings were co-chaired by Superintendent Craig Knight and Neil Thurlow, the Assistant Director responsible for community safety to better align the priorities and actions for wider level of services across the borough. 

New forums for more localised intervention had also been set up in the north, south and central of the borough.  The LET’s senior and community safety officers had worked together with the four police sergeants at the fortnightly Tactical Coordination Group meetings to deal with ward level issues. The LET would help address the top three priorities brought by the Police whilst the latter would join the LET’s coordinated patrols to meet the service demands of the residents.  The two parties had worked closely to tackle drug abuse and car crimes as well as deal with assault cases in the borough.

Replying to Councillor Andrew Dinsmore’s question about LET officers being assaulted, Mo Basith recalled the incidents he had come across as an officer and confirmed that the risk of physical threat was there for LET officers.  He mentioned about a case in which the LET officer had been subject to racist remarks and assaulted twice. The Council worked to support the officer and worked with the Police to ensure action was taken – the offender was identified, charged and imprisoned for it.  There was a more recent case with racial abuse directed at two LET officers who had intervened due to a reported nuisance.  That person was going to court in a few months’ time.  

In response to the Chair’s concern about the support available to LET officers, Mo Basith noted the good support network for staff like the employee assistant programme and the forums that staff might attend to get the mental health support they needed. As regards internal support, the LET seniors might modify the patrol schedule and move officers among wards so that the victimised officers might stay away from the abusers. In response to a question around lone patrols of female officers, Mo advised that any female officer who felt the need to conduct patrol with another officer would always have that support.

Councillor Omid Miri asked about measures in place to deepen the cooperation of the two separate bodies, the Police and LET, outside their regular meetings, such as an emergency direct line. Neil Thurlow (Assistant Director of Community Safety, Resilience and CCTV) highlighted the emergency function of the LET radios and body cameras carried by the officers during the 24/7 patrol.  Once the emergency button was hit, the signals would go through the CCTV control room.  The LET would have direct access to the police radio through Airwave (the Met Police radio network) to request support. The LET body cameras could also stream live footage in that emergency situation which went to CCTV. These images could then be patched through to police where/if needed.

In terms of sharing information and intelligence, Neil Thurlow noted local TCGs provided a fortnightly meeting and these helped shape delivery to tackle “on the ground issues”. These meetings, with TEG, would be developed and built over time allowing more work to be done jointly on bigger challenges such as gang crimes or violence, through partnership and strategic assessment of shared priorities for actions. Councillor Miri appreciated the hard work done to reduce the anti-social behaviour reports by 22%. 

The Chair asked about the number of police officers allocated to H&F following the central government’s announcement of putting more police officers on the streets. He also asked about the impacts on operation. Neil Thurlow said that while the official number of additional police officers deployed to H&F was not available, he observed that H&F got an increase from one inspector to two and to a total of 8 sergeants who shall take up the neighbourhood function of the north and south of the borough.  In terms of operation, the LET’s senior and community safety officers would undertake shared operations with the sergeants to tackle the shared priorities.  Neil noted the increase in police capacity had enabled more problem-solving opportunities between the LET management and police inspectors who shall work to shape each other’s thinking in respective work. Matthew Hooper (Director of Public Protection) remarked that while the absolute number of police officers in London had been uplifted, the population of London since the last marco crime statistics published in 2010 had also increased which meant the police per 1,000 Londoners was now less than that time so the challenges remained. He confirmed Councillor Miri’s understanding that even the police numbers were increasing, they were not increasing at a rate that was proportional to the rising population.

The Chair recalled at the November meeting, Superintendent Craig Knight had mentioned about the difficulties in recruiting police officers to fill the established positions and encouraged those suitable to come forward and apply.  Councillor Rebecca Harvey (Cabinet Member for Social Inclusion and Community Safety) said she learnt from Superintendent Knight one to two weeks’ ago that they were still struggling to recruit the right number of officers and this seemed to be an ongoing problem.  In this connection, Mo Basith noted the interest of serving police officers in working for the LET, with one of them starting in March and several enquiries made directly with the LET offices about the application process.  Councillor Dinsmore remarked about the changes in police numbers and recruitment.

The Chair thanked the report and LET’s success in meeting the challenges of the past year. He invited the officers to share changes of the services looking forward.  Matthew Hooper expected that there would be much closer working with the police in tackling issues such as drug dealing, violence and anti-social behaviour, and officers from both sides would focus daily on identified hotspots over the next 12 months. The LET would also continue the success in tackling the environmental crime in which LET officers had responded to large number of reporting on fly tipping and reduced them significantly to improve the borough’s look and feel.  

RESOLVED

That the Committee noted the report.