Lib Dem Police Campaigns Success

9.32.52am GMT Thu 29th Oct 2009

Strong Lib Dem campaigning and petitions have led to the welcome strengthening of the police presence in the South of the Borough.

Plans to scrap police stations in Streatham and Clapham by the Metropolitan Police Authority that had active Labour support have been ditched in the face of overwhelming objections and a 2000-strong petition organized by local Lib Dem campaigners.

Labour called this move modernization but the plan would have seen no proper police station operating along the A23 between Brixton and Croydon. Labour politicians were happy instead to see police removed to some remote centralised 'barracks' on an industrial estate.

Local people supported by Lib Dem councillors and campaigners were having none of this and objected to the plans in the formal consultations with the MPA.

Labour politicians then tried to scupper these objections by saying Streatham might still have a police 'presence' in the High Road. By this they actually meant a shop, probably not in the core shopping area, not open 24 hours a day, and probably staffed only by civilians.

Now these crazy plans are officially buried and the new Lambeth Borough Commander has actually strengthened policing in Streatham by appointing Superintendent Paul Wilson to be in charge of it.

Labour's response to this good news? Having lost their half-baked 'modernising agenda' they are now claiming there were never any closure plans in the first place. How's that for cheek?

VICE UNIT RETURNS

The new local Vice Unit is back thanks to strong Lib Dem action too. And a recent operation on Tooting Bec Common and the Garrads Road Area made a number of arrests.

For more than a year it was left to local safer neighbourhood policing teams to deal with vice and residents reported a worrying rise in vice activity in Streatham and Brixton Hill.

Only the Lib Dems argued persuasively that community police teams were not experienced enough and lacked sufficient resources to tackle the problem. And sharp rises in residential burglary supported the view that local police teams were being diverted away from their core functions.

New Lambeth Police Commander Nick Ephgrave agreed. Now the Vice Unit is back doing the job it is set up to deal with leaving local police teams free to make our local areas feel safer.

That sounds like a common-sense approach to us.