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Safer Neighbourhoods and people power
• IT suddenly dawned on me that Cantelowes Safer Neighbourhoods citizens panel is now in its fourth year.
Since February 2005, we have met 32 times and had three annual meetings, the most recent of which was on Thursday April 24.
Throughout this time we have been instrumental in the closure of eight drug dens, prioritisation of burglaries in the Bartholomew Road and Camden Square areas, youth related anti-social behaviour crime in Northpoint, St Pancras Way, and Maiden Lane estates, and the quenching of countless emerging problems in our ward. We now have a new priority for drugs related activities in and around Camden Mews area.
I have always maintained that no one person or statutory body could succeed in resolving these types of crimes on their own. We had to work together; panel members, council officers, the police, councillors all had to sit around a table and listen to each others perspectives and be receptive of each others needs.
When the Met Police decided to roll out this innovative idea of citizens tasking a local team of police officers with three priorities of crimes to be resolved in their neighbourhoods, I do wonder if they gave a thought to the consequences of this level of citizen empowerment.
Of course, panel members have a duty not to breach the trust placed upon them, but this must not be confused with our representative loyalties.
For instance when it comes to the crunch, where does ownership of the panel rest; the citizens or the police? As elected panel members, where would our ultimate loyalties lay; our communities or the police?
I feel team sergeants, cluster inspectors, and even chief inspectors are realising that citizen panels are autonomous from the control of the Met. Perhaps, though, there is some room for training the hierarchy and the politically correct corporate publicity machine within the Met that we need to be trusted, and that as panel members we do have those skills which are more conducive to reaching out to our communities, which I thought was the whole point of this exercise.
Meric Apak
Chair Cantelowes SNP
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