Camden News: In an extraordinary outpouring, councillors of all major parties greeted the maiden speech of newly appointed Lib Dem community safety chief James King on Monday with their tales of encounters with the borough’s pushers.

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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 19 June 2008

Crime chief came, listened and was conquered by drugs claims

HE came to tell them of successes, but in his first speech to the council chamber the Town Hall’s new crime chief came away with his ears buzzing with stories of Camden’s rampant drugs trade.
In an extraordinary outpouring, councillors of all major parties greeted the maiden speech of newly appointed Lib Dem community safety chief James King on Monday with their tales of encounters with the borough’s pushers.
As the Kilburn ward councillor reported that the number of drug-deals observed by CCTV in Camden had fallen by 26 per cent in the past year, fellow Lib Dem councillor Alexis Rowell was first to spoil the party.
“I’m still offered drugs more or less every day,” said Belsize councillor Rowell, who demanded further policing on Regent’s Canal, where his daily cycle ride takes him past a thriving cannabis market.
His outburst triggered similar tales from around the chamber – and from around the borough.
Seventy-one-year-old Labour councillor Roger Robinson described how he had been approached in his Somers Town ward: “I can tell you the drug-dealing I see there myself is frightening. They are there and they are in the open. I was offered drugs – me!”
He called for the authorities to have “absolutely no mercy in smashing the drug dealing industry in this borough once and for all.”
“Otherwise I’m not going to let my children or my children’s children grow up in the borough,” he added.
The availability of drugs is “something that none of us can be proud of or complacent about,” said fellow Lib Dem Kilburn councillor David Abrahams, echoing the comments of Conservative Gospel Oak councillor Keith Sedgwick, who said: “The environment in Camden accommodates the drugs trade.”
Councillor King responded with a catalogue of measures the council had taken since the Lib Dem and Conservative partnership declared last year that tackling the Camden Town drugs trade was to be their community safety priority.
“We are using Asbos where we’ve got people coming into Camden Town just to deal drugs,” he said, adding that the council had spent £130,000 on police overtime as well as funding additional Police Community Support Officers to patrol Camden Town.

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