Policing Acton

First thing to say is… At least I know you are reading my messages!

Thank you all for replying to my messages and engaging with this process. I know that you care about your streets and roads and that passion has come across clearly to me. 
I wanted to try and answer some of your questions in one go. As if I reply to each of you I will powering down the laptop about the time my shift ends and going home without having been out on patrol.

Firstly I want to talk about the Mount

We have just been through Christmas and New Year as a policing team. That not only includes officers having time with their families, but it also sees a shift local every day policing to holiday policing with celebrations being managed and so on. So this means less attention to our wards.

So upon returning to day to day life, we were faced with the realisation that a group of drinkers and a group of drug users had set up on The Mount- were having parties through the night, were openly buying and selling drugs and this needed to be our priority.

As a result I have changed all my shifts for the next two weeks to lates and I am basically doing fixed spot patrolling once the sun starts to set until my shift finishes. 

It is not the solution. It is all I can do on my own facing the clear message, that life has become intolerable for those who live and work around that area of the town centre. So I have made that commitment and that is what I will be doing.

Why don't you arrest them all Dave? Is a very common question.

So I will give you an example. 

On NYE we were tasked with patrolling North Acton around the Shisha bars in Park royal. We were able to get leadership to allow us to sweep the Town Centre before we left to do that. 
I went into Morrisons Car Park, with PC Dale and 4 users attempted to make off from us. I grabbed one male and searched him. He had been dealing and had 40 wraps of Class A on him. That was the end of the shift for PC Dale and I. We had to book him in and do all the necessary paperwork to complete our part of the arrest. We finished that shift at 3am.

This is not unusual when arresting someone. So when I am on my own, which is my normal situation, arresting is difficult. If I walk onto the Mount and arrest then I am back in the warm police station and no one is out on the street. 

In order to enable me to be back on the street for these 2 weeks, my Skipper has taken that case from me. He is going to do all the follow up work required so I can stand on the Mount and be present as a deterrent. 

Why don't you ban them from Acton?

Banning people from any area is a huge step and it takes several stages

Typically 

We need to issue a Community Protection Warning, a Community Protection Notice, arrest them for ignoring the Community Protection Notice several times, and then apply to the court for a Criminal Behaviour Order. This would ban them and then we can arrest every time.

All of the above is incredibly time consuming and labour intensive. I am in court on Friday to complere a Criminal Behaviour Order

We are not blessed with a huge number of Police officers on SNT. We also have a variety of masters to serve. One of the key responsibilities of SNT is to be working during business hours. This means there is a huge bias on our shift pattern to officers being here on early and mid shifts. We have 6 late shifts through out a 5 week period. The latest any officer works on SNT is 11pm.

Hopefully this explains why we need to be creative. 

For those who have raised the issue of Berrymead again, I have forwarded this to the Skipper and Inspector in the hope that they will move some resources or apply for extra funding to help us. We are looking at it and hopefully they will reply to you shortly.

Also I am going to be on the Mount shortly, I will also be walking down to Morrisons Car Park and Billington Mews. I will be there until 930 ish. I have already had the chance to meet a few of you and have a chat, so if you have any pressing questions or even want to just vent a bit then do come down and find me. I am a pretty robust chap I can take it.