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Plain-clothes police officers are trying to nip prostitution in the bud |
Street vice crackdown
‘Let’s not have another King’s Cross’
“DECOY Wendy is deployed.”
Under a lamppost next to a bus stop in Agar Grove, Camden Town, an undercover police officer from the Met’s Clubs and Vice unit is stood waiting.
She is not allowed to say anything or do anything, but her mere presence – and that of a series of other undercover female officers with similarly false names over the course of three nights last week – is enough.
Within five minutes, a crackling message comes from her concealed radio, a man in a red BMW has asked her for “business”.
The car is followed a discreet distance to Brewery Street, King’s Cross, where a man in his forties is arrested.
Ten others, including two Hackney cab drivers, will be snared by the same trap, and charged with soliciting, in what Sgt Ammar Saggar, the officer who devised the operation, called an effort to “disrupt and eradicate the anti-social behaviour caused by prostitution from the streets of Agar Grove”.
The whole exercise is highly choreographed, right down to the presence of the New Journal last Tuesday night to “observe” and therefore get the deterrent
message out.
But, according to Sgt Saggar, who leads the Cantelowes Safer Neighbourhoods team, it is essential.
She said: “This is nipping it in the bud. If we don’t, street prostitution here will get worse and worse, and we don’t want the area to become another King’s Cross.”
Vice officers confirm that kerb-crawlers use punter websites to identify areas where street prostitution takes place, and known “strips” gather momentum by word of mouth.
Residents have not universally supported the operation, however.
Cantelowes councillor Paul Braithwaite, who said he approved of the operation, said some residents had complained about the posters that Sgt Saggar put up claiming they damaged the character of the area.
And the local Safer Neighbourhood Panel, the group of citizens which liaises with the police team and sets their priorities for the area, took some persuading that kerb-crawling was much of a problem.
They only agreed to approve the street prostitution operations at the third time of asking.
Yesterday, Merik Apak, chairman of the Cantelowes Safer Neighbourhood Panel, said his colleagues were pleased with the operation.
He added: “We thought that it would lead to drug dealing, because if there is prostitution it leads to other crimes.
“There have not been many reports from the public, but the public may not come forward and report it because there is a stigma attached to it.” |
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