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Mayor Ken Livingstone with Chief Supt Mark Heath at the the Cantelowes Safer Neighbourhoods Team
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Crime rise ‘a temporary blip’ insists Mayor Ken
LONDON Mayor Ken Livingstone has said that Camden’s rising numbers of robberies, burglaries and car break-ins are a “temporary blip” and denied the borough is paying the price for the early roll-out of his Safer Neighbourhoods Team project.
The Mayor launched a defence of the dedicated community police teams despite suggestions that their early introduction in Camden had diverted resources away from combating other crime.
Although violent and sexual offences have fallen in Camden, Met figures show that robbery, burglary and motor vehicle crime are rising sharply, bucking the downward trend elsewhere in London.
Mr Livingstone said: “It’s amazing that this is the only place anywhere in London that seems to have thrown up a problem. But I suppose the crime that worries people most is violence, and that’s what’s been falling. The other things will come back into line. There’s no doubt about that. Overall crime is down here.”
Visiting the Cantelowes Safer Neighbourhoods Team at the new patrol base it shares with Kentish Town officers in Kentish Town Road, Mr Livingstone said on Thursday that the teams’ impact had reversed “40 years of the police’s retreat from the streets”.
The latest Met figures show robberies and burglaries were up 26 per cent in December compared with December 2005. Longer-term figures, which compare trends over the financial year, show that robbery is up 21 per cent, burglary up 10 per cent, and motor vehicle crime up 17 per cent. In the same period, the Met as a whole has seen a rise in robberies of just two per cent, while burglaries and vehicle crimes have fallen.
Det Chief Insp Dave Cobb, Camden Police’s lead officer in combating acquisitive crime, said: “We’re always going to be a difficult borough for street robbery because of where we are and what there is here, but we’ve taken every opportunity we have to place additional officers on the street. They’ve been directed to places where street crime has been most prevalent, around the O2 in Finchley Road, Camden Town, Bloomsbury and Kilburn.”
Chief Supt Mark Heath, Camden’s borough commander, said that as-yet-unpublished figures showed robbery and burglary had fallen since Christmas.
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