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

Received a report from Andrea Clemons, Head of Community Safety.

NOTED:

• That the new London Crime Policing Plan may result in changes to the performance indicators used in future
• Indicators for crimes highlighted in green show an improved performance from the baseline (2011/12) figures shown.  These include those for burglary, robbery, theft from motor vehicle and theft of motor vehicles
• Overall, the MOPAC seven crime categories for Enfield are showing a -1.2% decrease in the last 12 months
• Indicators for crimes highlighted in red show an increase in cases and include ‘theft from person’ and ‘violence with injury’. 
• The ‘violence with injury’ cases largely include domestic abuse cases and street brawls/ street gang incidents. Compared to other London boroughs our increase for these cases over the previous 12 months is relatively minor at 0.1%. The reason why the data for Enfield is better than for other boroughs regarding gang crime is that we are focusing on early intervention to restrict behaviours, this involves targeted work and bidding for resources.
• ‘ASB calls’, which is one of the additional SSCB priorities now includes calls taken relating to Council housing estates.
• The ‘Performance Tracker’ graph shows the increase in the % of cases of ‘violence with injury’ for Enfield since 2010.  Apart from this, the graph shows a general improvement trend for Enfield for the MOPAC seven crime categories.
• Both Robbery and Burglary indicators for Enfield show a decrease over the last 12 months.  Campaigns on ‘Met trace’ and ‘Be Safe’ are significant here and have been used to encourage people to secure their properties.
• Data for Serious Youth violence shows an increase of 2.1% for Enfield and 4.3% for London for the last 12 months. Although gang related crime is not a performance indicator, there are indicators which relate to this issue such as for knife or gun crime.  A ‘hotspot’ map showing the areas of increased ‘Serious Youth Violence’ in London for the last year indicates that north/eastern boroughs are particularly affected.
• It was pointed out that ‘gun crimes’ recorded, include cases where a crime is committed by a person who has intimated that he has a gun even when this may not later be found.   For those cases recorded as ‘gun discharged’, evidence would need to be shown that a gun had actually been discharged.  An armed response unit would be called out when it is known that a gun is present.
• Violence Trend Charts were shown for Dec 2013 to August 2016 - for the number of cases of ‘Robbery’ ‘Violence with Injury’ and ‘Serious Youth Violence’.  It also indicated the periods where additional resources were provided. This is to indicate whether additional resources had had an impact on crime.
• A table indicating the 5 strands of ‘hate crime’ indicated the number of offences for the year compared to the previous 12 months for both Enfield and London. There are relatively low numbers of hate crime in Enfield with racist offences experiencing the biggest numbers and the biggest percentage increase experienced disability. It also showed an increase in the number of faith offences. 
• A table showed the ‘hate crime’ data for the 95 days before and after the ‘Brexit’ referendum for Enfield and London.  This indicated a 16.1% increase in Racist hate crime for Enfield for the 95 days following the referendum, however there was no increase in the number of Faith hate crimes for the same period.  It was thought London may have been affected less by this than other areas because of its largely ‘diverse’ population.

The following questions/ comments were raised:

It was noted that there was a reduction in the number of vehicle thefts and also of the number of thefts from vehicles.  It was thought this may be as a result of manufacturers design improvements- leading to better security. 

Q: As well as the MOPAC 7 categories,- as a borough we had been allowed to set additional priorities, will this still be possible in future?

A: We can set our own priorities and work with the police and look at our Strategic Assessment to see if there are any anomalies.  It was noted that there will be different Ward Priorities.

It was confirmed that where a robbery has occurred with a knife, this would be included under the ‘knife offence’ category.  It was noted that knife crime figures show a reduction overall.

Q: What is being done to get us to move from ‘red’ highlighted crime categories into ‘green’?

A: We have specific targets in Enfield and various police operations are underway which focus on areas such as those for ‘Staying Safe’.