Agenda for Safer Neighbourhood Board on Wednesday, 27th October, 2021, 6.30 pm

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Conference Room, Civic Centre, Silver Street, Enfield, EN1 3XA. View directions

Contact: Email: Democracy@enfield.gov.uk 

Items
No. Item

1.

WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and introductions were made.

2.

APOLOGIES

Minutes:

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Lee David-Sanders (Deputy Leader Conservative Group & Crime Scrutiny Panel Chair),

Alok Agrawal (SNB Secretary), Vickie Pite (CAPE Chair), Adrian Bishop-Laggett (FERAA), Dionne John (CAPE Chair), Leena Parker (PEP Member).

3.

CHAIRS FEEDBACK

Tim Fellows (Chair) to present.

 

Feedback also to be provided by:

·         Stop & Search monitoring group

·         CCTV Monitoring group

Minutes:

Hate Crime: The Hate Crime Forum Management Group continues to meet virtually. There have been several meetings on how to take forward the Case Management Panel (CMP) and it finally met last week testing out its new structure. There were a few teething issues, but I think they will be easily overcome. There has been a 24.2% increase in race & religious hate crime and a 7.3% increase in homophobic hate crimes and in the 12 months ending July. Transgender stayed unchanged and disability fell by 37.9%.

In that last quarter I have meet with our new BCU Commander, attended two LCP² zoom meeting, the Safer & Stronger Communities Board, Crime Scrutiny Panel and attended training on modern day slavery.

The North Area Violence Reduction Group has met, and Janet is attending on our behalf.

Highway CAPE met and unfortunately our Chair announced that he was stepping down. I am in the process of organising the next meeting at which a new chair will be elected.

 

Yesterday I attended the Borough Commanders Commendation Ceremony at Forty Hall. It was a very good afternoon and good to see our local police being recognised for their good work. Superintendent Chris Jones had also attended the event and he commented that it had been a great opportunity for the Borough Commander to reward where Police Officers had gone over and above their call of duty. He added that he felt there was a need to expand even further on these types of event to recognise even more staff and officers for the invaluable work that they do. It had also been great to see Officers’ families attending as they are often impacted too by what happens on the shift.

 

MOPAC funding. To everyone’s complete amazement MOPAC announced there would be funding this year but announced it so late that there was little time to submit bids. We were able to get one bid in under the wire, which was successful, but to date no PO numbers have been released to be able to claim this year’s money. As you can imagine the chairs from all SNB’s are complaining about the situation.

 

On a sad note this will probably be the last meeting for our SNB Treasurer Sheila Stacey. Sheila has served on the Board and as a CAPE Chair for many years. Sheila’s dedication and wisdom will be sorely missed.

 

Stop & Search Monitoring Group

Janet Marshall has now been elected as Chair of this group and Janet Evans as Vice-Chair. A new Police Inspector has also been linked to the group and there are lots of plans ahead.

 

CCTV Monitoring Group

Tim provided some background information on the role of the CCTV Monitoring Group and explained that the Council had wanted some independent scrutiny of the CCTV cameras therefore the SNB provide volunteers who visit the CCTV centre in groups of two to view the cameras and provide feedback. These visits had been put on the back burner during COVID but would now  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

4.

MODERN DAY SLAVERY

To receive a briefing on Modern Day Slavery from Emine Arif and Sherry Salih, Modern Day Slavery Investigators.

Minutes:

RECEIVED a presentation from Emine Arif, Modern Slavery Investigator.

 

NOTED:

 

(i)            The Modern Slavery team consists of a team manager and two investigators all of who work closely with a specialist police team in the borough.

(ii)          Their role is to tackle the criminal element of Modern Slavery and locational and business issues.

(iii)         The victim work is still held by the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH); this is the lead agency who the LBE Modern Slavery Team support.

(iv)         The team have links with LBE internal teams such as Enviro health, council tax, business rates, ASB and YOT teams to name but a few.

(v)          External links include the Police (local and central), other boroughs, HMRC, DWP, Enable and NHS colleagues.

(vi)         Referrals to the team come from lots of departments including ones already named above as well as schools, colleges members of the public and councillors. There is a helpline which is manned during working hours and referrals are also received via email.

(vii)        Modern slavery is an umbrella term which includes human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour.

(viii)       This is the recruitment, movement, harbouring or receiving of children, men or women through the use of force, coercion, abuse or vulnerability, deception or other means for the purposes of exploitation.

(ix)         Different types of exploitation include sexual exploitation, forced labour, servitude, forced criminality/County Lines, financial exploitation, forced marriage, debt bondage and organ harvesting.

(x)          Further detailed information was provided on the different types of exploitation as what these entailed.

(xi)         The scale of modern slavery in the UK is significant. Modern slavery crimes are being committed across the country and there has been year on year increases in the number of victims identified.

(xii)        Met Police stats were provided. Unfortunately, however the actual figures will never really be known as this crime is often under reported with many potentially not even realising that they are victims of Modern Slavery.

(xiii)       Further information was provided on the top 10 nationalities reported as victims of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in the UK, with UK (34%-3560), Albanian (15%-1638) and Vietnamese (6%-653) nationals the most commonly reported potential victims.

(xiv)      With UK nationals, labour exploitation in adults and criminal exploitation in children is the most common. With regards to gender breakdown, males are used mostly for labour exploitation, females for sexual exploitation and children for criminal exploitation (county lines)

(xv)       In Enfield the picture is different from that of national level re types of reported cases. The biggest form of referred cases of human trafficking is for the purpose of sexual exploitation (71%) followed by domestic servitude (16%) and forced labour at 13%.

(xvi)      A case study was shown of a Modern Slavery raid that had taken place in Enfield at Tile Kiln Farm where concerns had been raised regarding possible labour exploitation and organised crime links. A year long joint Police and Modern Slavery Team investigation had taken place. Over 100 professionals were involved in the planned raid  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING pdf icon PDF 119 KB

To agree the minutes of the Safer Neighbourhood Board meeitng on 8 July 2021.

Minutes:

AGREED the minutes of the meeting held on 8 July 2021.

6.

EXAMINATION OF CRIME STATISTICS pdf icon PDF 4 MB

Examination of crime statistics received:

·         Current and planned police operations

·         Confidence and satisfaction

·         Target establishment on CAPE’s (including staff changes, vacant posts, anticipated timelines for replacement, etc)

·         Crime stats

·         Abstractions from Ward teams

Minutes:

Superintendent Chris Jones went through the report in the agenda pack. The following was highlighted:

 

  • The information provided a flavour of activities currently being undertaken by the Neighbourhood Teams
  • Operation Boxster works predominately in Fore Street covering Enfield and Haringey targeting street sex workers and the crime associated on the periphery of this activity.
  • There are currently 44 identified street sex workers on the North Area. 85 street cautions have been issued in the last six weeks and ten kerb crawlers have been processed in the last two weeks and nine subjects have been issued conditional cautions.
  • Monthly diversion courses have been organised using Street Light Foundation UK, whereby offenders must attend a five-hour seminar on the dangers of using sex workers.
  • Operation Boxster also covers the more criminal element of brothels. For example, whilst conducting a brothel visit one of the clients at the address was identified as wanted and arrested for a violent robbery in South London and breach of tag.
  • This ongoing operation has seen some great work taking place and arrests have tripled.
  • Recent figures presented to the Crime Scrutiny Panel showed a 30% reduction in reported Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) calls around the on-street sex workers which demonstrates visible and tangible results.
  • With regards to Safer Schools, Officers are back in schools and have been talking to students about how to stay safe online and deal with online bullying. A MET Cyber Champion has been recruited to go into schools to advise and educate students and parents around online safety.
  • With the worsening crises around the world there has been a new influx of refugees from Afghanistan. Safer Schools Officer PC Ken Carrol has been working with You vs You to help identify vulnerable people and share with the how to stay safe in a foreign country.
  • An update was provided on the work of the Safer Estate Teams which had resulted in some positive outcomes with arrests being made.
  • Regularly weapon sweeps are ongoing in open spaces and weapons are often recovered.
  • Some fantastic community events had taken place including community engagement days and youth engagement continued with the very successful Cadet Programme which had included a bumper summer of Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions trying to make up for the lost year of 2020.
  • Between the 26th and 29th July Enfield and Haringey Cadets took part in a week of activity which had involved weapon sweeps, litter picking and conducting various surveys with the public.
  • The top priority for the Safer Neighbourhood Ward teams remains to supress violence. Neighbourhood Officers are out daily conducting weapon sweeps and robbery patrols to detect and deter crime.
  • The teams continue to check open park spaces to ensure that young people feel safe when out and about. A lot of females have fed back that they don’t feel safe in certain areas when out walking or jogging. Therefore, Superintendent Jones said that it is imperative that the SNTs are out and about, wearing Hi-Vis jackets so  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Minutes:

Prior to lockdown guest speakers were invited to these meetings to upskill members. Some previous examples of speakers are on Youth Offending Service, CCTV Centre, Drugs team, Body worn Camera’s and cybercrime. The chair sought suggestions for future topics and the following ideas were put forward:

  • Integrated Offender Management
  • Fire Brigade
  • Counter Terrorism- local issues
  • School Officers – work taking place in schools
  • Enviro Crime
  • Frequent Flyers- small Police team working with Mental Health Teams with regards to a small number of people who regularly contact the emergency services (Police, Ambulance, Fire Brigade) with what are usually mental health issues. This has a huge impact on these resources.

 

After further discussions it was agreed that Superintendent Chris Jones (MPS) would provide a brief update on Counter Terrorism – local issues at the next SNB meeting on Thursday 13 January 2022.

Action: Superintendent Chris Jones, (MPS)

 

 

It was also noted that the SNB membership list was somewhat out of date and therefore needed to be amended.

 

AGREED that Janet Marshall (SNB Vice-Chair) or Sheila Stacey (SNB Treasurer) would send an updated list to Stacey Gilmour (SNB Administrator) to make the necessary amendments.

Action: Janet/Sheila/Stacey

8.

DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

To note the dates of future meetings as follows:

 

Thursday 13 January 2022

Thursday 7 April 2022

Minutes:

NOTED the dates of future meetings as follows:

 

Thursday 13 January 2022

Thursday 7 April 2022