The panel's newest priority is to reduce the total amount of crime occurring at the O2 Centre. Happily the panel's newest member, Mark Packer the O2 General Manager, was also present. So much of our debating time was used to find out about the interface between the various stores' and restaurants' security teams and the Safer Neighbourhood officers.
One interesting fact that emerged was that it was Sainsburys' policy not to record shoplifting offences to the police where the value of goods was less than £50, preferring instead for their own security staff to intervene, recover the goods from thieves immediately outside the premises, and then to ban shoplifters from the store.
As the Safer Neighbourhood Panel was being asked to set a target of reducing crime at the O2 Centre by 10% over 12 months, I felt that we should also expect a 10% reduction in the separately held records of minor shoplifting offences at Sainsburys too, otherwise we could not judge whether the extra focus of our police team had had any effect over the year.
One interesting anecdote was the story of an arrest by one of our constables of a shoplifter who attempted to push a trolley out of the store without paying, piled high with over £450 worth of meat and cheese. Back at the station he was tested for drugs in which he proved positive for opiates and heroin. It appeared the attempted theft was to sell the goods to fund a drug habit. The interesting end of this story was that the thief appeared before a magistrates court and was sentenced to prison for 4 months the day after the offence, the fastest result recorded for our team in recent years.
Other measures being promoted by the team to reduce the number of bags stolen in restaurants is to encourage the proprietors to fix "Chelsea Clips"under tables to allow bags to be hung from them, rather than their customers take the risk of placing bags on the floor.
The meeting also studied the statistics for offences like affray and actual bodily harm within the Centre. One conclusion was to encourage the O2 Centre's new owners, Land Securities, to consider finding a different tenant for the unit currently occupied by the Walkabout chain.
One other interesting anecdote was that a brothel has now been closed in Wedgwood Walk on Lymington Road after officers posed as potential clients to a woman who rented a leasehold flat there. After a warning failed to stop her activities contact was made to the leaseholder who lived abroad. The place is now sealed.
JOHN BRYANT
No comments:
Post a Comment