Lib Dems soft on crime

CCTV in Brixton

Labour has published a catalogue of misdemeanors committed by Cllr Peter Truesdale, the Leader of Lambeth Council, over his failure to tackle crime in the Borough. His complacency is especially damning as it comes at a time when the Labour Government provides ever-more resources and powers to the Council to be used against crime.

Cllr Peter O’Connell, Labour’s spokesman against Lambeth crime, has catalogued the failures. They are:
1. While drug offences in Lambeth increased by 82% in the past year, the council's arrest referral scheme helped only half the number it should to persuade crack-users, after arrest, to receive medical treatment.
2. The average time between Lambeth Housing serving notice on a crack house and the date of eviction is 33 weeks, way off the eight-week target.
3. With the total of all recorded crimes at 47,645 last year, you would think Lambeth would have some care for the most frequent victims who are schoolchildren. But fewer and fewer are helped by Victim Support, which relies on council grant-aid.

4. A number of Liberal councillors have admitted they may stop maintaining all the CCTV cameras, which were brought in by public demand. They are discouraging any residents' group from calling for more. In particular, they are still stalling on the last Labour council's plan to introduce mobile CCTV which would prove the best value of all as the improving technology can be moved when crime is seen to be displaced from hotspots. At £8,000 a camera, it costs a fraction of a permanent system. The police, and the Lambeth community safety team, advocate mobile CCTV, but the Liberal Democrats have so far said No.

5. The number of vehicles abandoned, and then labelled for crushing by Lambeth, was 53% below target.

6. In spite of the Liberal boast about pollution, the council's noisy night patrol seized over the past year the grand total of one item of sound equipment. The number of cases prosecuted by Lambeth against nuisance dropped 36%.

7. There is a chronic under-provision of youth workers in Lambeth in contrast to the rest of London. Lambeth is now under public attack by senior police officers for its failure to follow the example of neighbouring boroughs by staffing an on-the-street detachment to divert many identified youths away from a life of crime.

8. The council's youth offending team screening only half the number it should of young people subject to supervision orders. The same Lambeth team failed to make contact with a large number of other youths within six months of re-conviction who should have been offered intensive support and surveillance. Two in every five at-risk youngsters fail to receive the key-worker support they should have. Worse, there is a decision to spend money even more thinly from this summer. There simply is no "Justice into work" programme for young offenders, an astonishing failure for an inner-city council.

9. Lambeth has failed to highlight domestic violence, racial offences and homophobia to the extent that all such hate crimes failed to reach police targets.

Commenting Cllr O’Connell said: “It’s a disgrace that the Lib Dem/Tory Administration is failing so badly in its duty to make the streets safe for Lambeth’s residents. The vast majority of crime victims are plain, decent individuals from every street. Cllr Truesdale has done nothing except sit on his hands and bleat about poverty causing crime. I have today written to him to demand an explanation for the Borough’s poor performance and to address the nine failures listed above.”


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