Agenda for Crime Scrutiny Panel on Wednesday, 4th November, 2020, 7.00 pm

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Virtual Meeting/Remote - please use the links on the Agenda Front Sheet to join the virtual meeting

Contact: Susan O'Connell - email:  susan.o'connell@enfield.gov.uk 

Items
No. Item

1.

WELCOME AND APOLOGIES

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting. Apologies had been received from Councillor Pite.

2.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Members of the Council are invited to identify any disclosable pecuniary, other pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests relevant to the items on the agenda.

 

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

3.

MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD 2 SEPTEMBER 2020 pdf icon PDF 90 KB

To agree the minutes of the meeting held 2 September 2020.

Minutes:

AGREED the minutes of the meeting held on 2 September 2020.

4.

PROSTITUTION IN ENFIELD pdf icon PDF 4 MB

To receive a presentation from Superintendent Chris Jones

Minutes:

Superintendent Chris Jones and Acting Police Sergeant Eren Emin introduced this report.

 

Noted:

·         The presentation in the agenda pack is on Operation Boxster, this is a dedicated operation in the Fore Street area covering both Enfield and Haringey and has been a full-time operation for four to five months.

·         This was an extremely difficult long-standing problem.

·         This is a partnership led approach.

·         The presentation covers; background and history, operation objectives, command structure, complaints, engagement, designing out crime with Enfield Council, enforcement action, days of action results and the future vision.

·         Fore street has been known as Enfield’s “Red Light District” for the last 10 years.

·         In 2015 a sex worker was stabbed to death whilst stood on Fore street N18 and between 2017-18 there were two stranger rapes of sex workers.

·         Although there has been engagement with sex workers for many years, through charities and support agencies this has not reduced either the number of sex workers or the high levels of ASB and other related crimes.

·         In November 2019 Operation Boxster was launched as a multi-agency and partnership operation. In June 2020 this became a permanent team made up of 1 Police Sergeant and 6 Police Constables.

·         The operational objectives and the command structure are detailed on pages 9 and 10 of the agenda pack.

·         The police receive complaints through 101, Met website and through Twitter. All of which are regularly monitored. Common complaints are; condoms left everywhere; they are doing business in front of my house; Fore street is covered with sex workers and the area is filled with gang members using sex workers.

·         There is a balance of engagement against enforcement, many partnership meetings take place and guidance is taken from multiple outreach projects.

·         Unfortunately, services offered by these outreach projects are often refused due to the amount of money they are making.

·         Examples were provided within the presentation of work undertaken with Enfield Council to design out crime.

·         Operation Boxster officers work majority late shifts and night shifts to target high levels of ASB, sex work and crime in the N18 area.

·         Sex worker and kerb crawler enforcement is taking place with multiple arrests achieving a 96% conviction rate.

·         At the start of the operation 36 persistent sex workers were identified, through engagement and enforcement there has been an overall reduction of 76%., although some has slowly started to return

·          In excess of 27 vehicles in the last three months have been seized following proactive stops.

·         This operation also targets those supplying drugs following intelligence led warrants multiple drugs and weapons have been seized: 11 knives, 2 firearms and 63 separate drug seizures since June 2020.

·         Moving forward the vision is to radically reduce the number of sex workers operating on the streets of Enfield, mitigate the risks associated with sex work and increase the sense of safety with the local community and local residents. The robust zero tolerance approach will continue.

 

Questions, queries and comments made:

 

1.    In response to a query on where the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

BURGLARY IN ENFIELD pdf icon PDF 250 KB

To receive a presentation from Superintendent Chris Jones.

Minutes:

Superintendent Chris Jones and temporary Superintendent Dayle Speed introduced this report.

 

NOTED:

·         The burglary performance is detailed in full on the first page of the presentation. It was highlighted that Enfield has seen a month on month reduction since April 2020. October has seen the highest level of detections in the past 12 months and that 14 wards are showing a reduction and 7 are showing an increase in burglary with Turkey Street the most challenging ward.

·         Early on this year a review of the approach to burglary in North Area, The NA burglary strategy is detailed on page 25 of the agenda, the first 2 points are corporate targets. To achieve these targets, it is necessary fo upskill staff to deliver improved performance and improve public confidence through promoting good work of police and partners

·         From a response end and leading on burglary have looked to identify key people that it was felt could deliver around the challenges of burglary in a dedicated team. It took around 3 months to identify the team of a detective sergeant, and 10 uniformed Police constables from a poole of approximately 450 response officers for people aspiring to be future detectives. By the end of June this year the dedicated burglary focus unit was up and running.

·         Burglary is tackled through reducing victimisation, targeting offenders and making the location hostile to offending. All three must be targeted together. Challenges for North Area is to bring together roughly 1200 police staff, two local authorities and all the various supporting partners. It can be challenging to ensure that everyone is working as one team particularly during lockdown.

·         All key stakeholders come together every 6 weeks, the police have other performance meetings where burglary is discussed. This is very important.

·         Page 26 provides details of Enfield Burglary Offence levels, residential burglary dropped significantly during lockdown, when more people were at home, lots of shops and businesses closed and less people were in the streets so could be more easily recognised by the police. Between 10am to 3pm is the most vulnerable period for residential burglary. During lockdown business and community offences went up as shops and business closed which made them vulnerable. Some quick time analysis has been done on where vulnerable locations ahead of the second lockdown so that patrol patterns can be adjusted accordingly.

·         Page 27 of the agenda pack details Enfield Burglary Detection rate. These relates to the people that are arrested and in the majority of cases charged. The months of April and May 20 were highlighted, these must be seen in the context of low levels of offending. These are actually normal levels of arrests and charging of offenders. There  were low detection rates for September but these are reversed for October as Enfield is expected to have the highest recorded detections in the past 12 months.

·         Burglary is a crime where the majority of offences are committed by a minority of people. One of the challenges in Enfield is the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.

SAFER & STRONGER COMMUNITIES BOARD PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT pdf icon PDF 2 MB

To receive a report from Andrea Clemons, Head of Community Safety.

Minutes:

Andrea Clemons, Head of Community Safety introduced this report.

 

NOTED:

·         The refreshed Partnership Plan has been completed and is due to come to the next meeting. The same priorities have been agreed which are:

o   Reducing burglary and keeping people safe at home;

o   Tackling violent crime – in all its forms

o   Keeping young people safe and reducing their risks from crime;

o   Promoting cohesion and tackling hate crime;

o   Dealing with anti-social behaviour.

With the agreement of the Community Safety Partnership a requirement has been added for some additional communication around vehicle crime and a strong partnership focus on tackling illegal drugs.

·         The report provides an update on all crime types. Most crime for the year ending September 2020 are down with the notable exception of Domestic Abuse incidents, Anti-social behaviour, Hate Crime and some types of vehicle crime.

·         Serious Youth Violence has reduced significantly, partly due to Covid and the closure of schools with less people out on the street and there has been some targeted work by the police assisted by partners. However, Enfield has the highest number of victims in London. Serious Youth Violence is a group of crimes that are violence and robbery committed by or on young people aged 19 or under. Knife crime with injury is down by 42.5% in this period. There has recently been a report into Stop and Search with 11 recommendations that are being adopted by the MPS with an action plan to report changes via the local community monitoring group.

·         Violence against women and girls and domestic abuse with injury has remained static. However, incidents of domestic abuse have gone up by almost 9%. During lockdown, from 1 May the Director of Children’s Services has worked in partnership to develop a Domestic Abuse Hub where members of the public can call directly to ask for help. The Hub has seen an increasing number of referrals.

·         Hate Crime has risen by 46% over the year to September 2020 and this is predominately racist and religious motivated crime. An analyst has been tasked with looking into this which found that in the largest category these were vitriolic neighbourhood disputes.

·         Anti-social behaviour reports rose by 65.5% increase during the last 12 months. This is already a high-volume crime. In the main these have been noncompliance with Covid restrictions, neighbourhood disputes and disorders including unlicensed music events.

·         As bonfire night approaches working in partnership with the police to develop contact points for this and during the upcoming weekend for the local authority and the police to ensure that lines of communication are open to ensure the best response.

·         Recently received verification of extension of funding from the GLA, this is used to fund a number of interventions to drive forward the partnership plan. Some examples of this are OWL scheme, mentoring for young people, some targeted outreach including A & E and domestic advocates.

 

Questions, comments and queries:

1.    Members suggested that it would be helpful for future reports in the summary  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.

WORK PROGRAMME 2020/21 pdf icon PDF 150 KB

To note the work programme for 2020/21.

Minutes:

The work programme was noted.

8.

DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

To note the dates of future meetings as follows:

 

·         26 January 2021

·         16 March 2021

 

These meetings will start at 7pm

Minutes:

The dates of future meetings were noted.