Camden News: Tory councillor’s shock accusation at the Town Hall

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Camden News
Published: 10 April 2008

The front page of the New Journal in March, 2007, reporting an attack on Cllr Sedgwick at his home

Tory councillor’s shock accusation at the Town Hall

AN OUTSPOKEN councillor whose campaigning against youth disorder has seen him attacked and branded a “snitch” accused the Town Hall’s anti-crime chief of endangering him and his family on Monday by not taking stronger action.
The council chamber fell silent on Monday night as Conservative councillor Keith Sedgwick turned on the Lib Dem community safety chief Councillor Ben Rawlings and delivered a three minute account of the intimidation inflicted on him and his family since he testified against gangs of drug-dealers in Gilden Crescent, near his Gospel Oak 7 and 8 estate home.
Recounting how he had been beaten with belts and a cycle helmet, had the word “snitch” graffitied on his home and had missiles thrown at his baby’s window, Cllr Sedgwick told the 26-year-old Cllr Rawlings: “You’re a nice guy – but in this instance your political inexperience and your youthful naivety have endangered myself, my son and my community.”
Although the perpetrators were known to the police and council and some were subject to anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), Cllr Sedgwick claimed Cllr Rawlings’ refusal to sanction the publication of their names and faces had meant that they were still on the streets and able to attack and threaten him, his wife and his infant son.
Cllr Sedgwick said he had spent the morning in court testifying to the latest outrage, in which he had been allegedly spat at and threatened with having his throat slashed.
He said: “The person who threatened to slash my throat actually had an Asbo against him. I asked for quick comms (the council’s internal warning system) to be put around about these people, (but) you have refused.”
Concern for the human rights of youth criminals meant he had to warn his wife to beware the vengeful teenagers out to get him, he added.
But though Cllr Rawlings expressed sympathy for the injuries suffered by Cllr Sedgwick, he said naming and shaming youth criminals could be counter-productive.
He said: “You have called very openly for vigilante justice – that doesn’t work, and has never worked.”
The decision to change the council’s policy on publicising the details of offenders subject to anti-social behaviour legislation – which currently protects the under-18s – would have to be taken by the council’s ruling executive committee, he added.

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