Policing/crime

A new study shows that the closure of police stations in Waltham Forest likely was a false economy, and may have actually aggravated criminality

May 2, 2024 Policing/crime

From 2011 onwards, Waltham Forest saw police stations in Leyton, Leytonstone, and Walthamstow close, leaving only Chingford open. There was much disquiet about this at the time, but senior police officers and their allies assured residents that money would be saved without any discernible impact on policing or criminality. Now a paper by Dr. Elisa Facchetti of the Institute of Fiscal Studies sugge... »

Local faith in the police plummets to levels lower than elsewhere in London. Why? Probably because too few criminals are being caught!

June 19, 2023 Policing/crime

It is a striking, though often overlooked fact, that Waltham Forest residents’ trust and confidence in the police has not only declined markedly over recent years, but is also comparatively less favourable than in most other London boroughs. What follows looks at the dimensions of this unsatisfactory situation, and then turns to  discuss its possible causes. Local trust and confidence in... »

Who’d have guessed it? A senior policeman talks nonsense about hate crime at a LBWF Scrutiny Committee meeting, and councillors remain silent

May 9, 2023 Policing/crime

A previous post (see link below) expressed disquiet about the fact that both LBWF and the local Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have been pursuing hate crime in the borough as a priority, even though the evidence shows it is a small-scale phenomenon that doesn’t much worry residents. What follows is written in similar vein, and suggests that not only have LBWF and the police failed to properly m... »

Hate crime in Waltham Forest: setting aside the scary rhetoric, is it as bad as LBWF claims?

February 13, 2023 Policing/crime

Introduction In the last few years, LBWF has regularly asserted that Waltham Forest is afflicted by ‘an unprecedented rise’ in damaging hate crime – especially, according to senior councillors, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and transgender hate crime.  As a response, and leading on from a specially convened Citizen’s Assembly, it has put in place various high-profile awarene... »

Crime up, police sanction detections down, yet the LBWF Safer Neighbourhoods Board hasn’t met since November 2021

September 12, 2022 Policing/crime

In the 12 months ending August 2022, crime in Waltham Forest rose 1.9 per cent, while sanction detections (charges, summonses, cautions reprimands, final warning, etc.) fell by the same amount. Turning to the most common crime in the borough, violence against the person, there were 6,710 offences in 2021-22, 2.3 per cent down on the previous year, which seems a plus, though one that is consid... »

Can the ordinary resident get justice in Waltham Forest?

March 14, 2022 Policing/crime

Some may judge the question posed in the title of this post as superfluous, with the answer so obviously ‘yes’ that it’s not worthy of further consideration. But consider these two case studies. Case One – Mr. A For some years, Mr. A has lived in a flat at a LBWF sheltered housing block.  In March 2021, he answered a knock on his door, and was confronted by a tradesman who claimed to be from ... »

Crime and policing latest: the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board hits the skids again, and now LBWF – controversially – wants to disband it

October 5, 2021 Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

The Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board (WFSNB) brings together councillors and residents, and is a potentially very important component of the local fight against crime, supported, as it is, by LBWF, the Metropolitan Police Service,  and the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC), and charged with ‘bringing police and communities together to decide local policing ... »

Waltham Forest’s Safer Neighbourhoods Board and MOPAC funding: the scandal continues

February 16, 2018 Gang Prevention Programme, LBWF spin, Policing/crime

A post of September past (see link below) reported that, though in FYs 2015-16 and 2016-17 the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhood Board (WFSNB) had been allotted £78,000 of Mayor’s Officer for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) funding, and promised to rigorously track how this was spent, it had so far failed to submit anywhere near the required number of monitoring reports. Now it has just emerged that n... »

LBWF Leader Cllr. Clare Coghill and knife crime: some issues that need to be addressed, and urgently

November 21, 2017 Cllr. Clare Coghill, Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

According to the Waltham Forest Guardian, there were serious stabbings in Walthamstow on the 14, 16, and 19 November just past, leading the police to impose a section 60 order, which allows them augmented powers of stop and search. On 17 November, the Leader of LBWF, Clare Coghill, issued a press release: ‘”I fully understand that the community is concerned following the two violent in... »

Waltham Forest’s Safer Neighbourhoods Board and MOPAC funding: a scandal in the making

September 13, 2017 Cllr. Liaquat Ali, Gang Prevention Programme, Policing/crime

Previous posts have dealt in depth with the travails of the Waltham Forest Safer Neighbourhoods Board (WFSNB) – its inability to hold regular meetings, the incompleteness of its minutes, and the fact that it publicly named constituent members without asking their permission, or (bizarrely) even informing them that they had been signed up to serve. Now it emerges that there are major concerns about... »

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