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CRIME FIGHT MOVES TO A&E
Hospitals will hand over info about patients’ injuries
POLICE are to use information gathered in hospital accident and emergency wards to target violent pubs and clubs and pinpoint streets that attract knife crime.
Details of injuries to patients admitted to the Royal Free’s A&E department in Hampstead will be shared with police and the council anonymously in a bid to target “problematic locations and venues”.
The scheme is set to be launched within weeks. The data will cast light on the estimated 50 per cent of assaults that are never recorded in police figures, as well as pave the way for renegade bar owners or clusters of venues to receive extra police attention.
The project is so strongly backed by Camden Council and the Department of Health that both claimed credit for it being up and running already this week, although the Royal Free insisted “categorically” yesterday that no data had been collected from patients so far.
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said on Monday: “Sharing data between hospitals and police is crucial. It enables us to gain a full picture of what is happening in our streets. It allows us to target action in the areas where it is most needed and that in turn reduces knife offences.”
Conservative councillor Don Williams, chairman of the council’s licensing committee, said: “Once we start getting a history of data it could show up special problems in particular areas, and that could lead to a revision of policy.”
Some confusion followed the Department of Health’s trumpeting of the scheme at a health and crime summit on Monday, when Minister for London Tony McNulty joined Health Minister Dawn Primarolo in praising the “trailblazing” progress of the scheme at six hospitals including the Royal Free.
But a spokesman at the Royal Free said yesterday that the project was still being discussed. And he repeated assurances that patients’ data had not been collected despite statements sent to Lib Dem health spokesman Chris Huhne in March after the MP made a Freedom of Information request.
The hospital apparently said: “Yes, we are an early implementer site for London, for the Home Office reducing knife crime initiative and Camden PCT’s alcohol and assault anonymised data collection project. We anonymise the data in line with our data protection and confidentiality guidelines, and submit these data to the information lead for Camden’s Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.”
The council is seeking to extend the scheme to include University College London Hospital’s A&E. The Town Hall’s licensing regime has come under sustained criticism for failing to get to grips with the cumulative impact of new pubs and clubs.
The DoH said anonymised information collected under the scheme could lead to additional CCTV, the compulsory use of plastic glasses, or changes to licensing hours in “hotspot areas”. |
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