As I presume Eric Leach is referring to me, and I am the Cabinet Member for Safer Communities in Ealing, I’ll venture into W5 from my usual nesting place in actonw3.com.George Knox might want to set out all the figures and set them out properly. The figures he quote are on the Met’s website (http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/datatable.php?borough=xb&period=year) and are not very user friendly as they show totals and some – but not all – of the breakdown for the two most recent years to January 2010. Here are the recorded crime figures for Ealing for calendar years 2008 and 2009 (the latter in brackets), with a full breakdown of the total. Violence Against the Person - 7,631 (7,773)Sexual Offences – 309 (342)Robbery - 1,433 (1,294)Burglary - 3,949 (3,956)Theft and Handling - 10,186 (10,842)Fraud or Forgery - 2,059 (2,466)Criminal Damage - 3,527 (3,561)Drugs - 3,361 (2,545)Other Offences – 442 (414)Total Offences - 32,897 (33,193)And here is a comparison of recorded crime changes in Ealing between 2008 and 2009 with those across London as a whole– the first figures are for Ealing, the ones in brackets are for London. Violence Against The Person 142 1.9% ( 868 0.5%)Sexual Offences 33 10.7% ( 710 8.0%)Robbery -139 -9.7% ( -241 -0.7%)Burglary 7 0.2% ( 2,340 2.5%)Theft & Handling 656 6.4% (-5,494 -1.7%)Fraud & Forgery 407 19.8% ( -986 -2.6%)Criminal Damage 34 1.0% (-6,811 -7.0%)Drugs -816 -24.3% ( -9,973 -12.8%)Other Notifiable Offences -28 -6.3% ( 305 2.6%)Total Offences 296 0.9% (-19,282 -2.3%) A mixed bag. Ealing did better on robbery, burglary and drugs that London but worse in theft and fraud. Within the theft category, the biggest increase was in theft from vehicles (up 490). I raised this with the police, who acknowledged that this had been a very big problem in the first half and more effort had been put into this latterly (through measures such as using ‘decoy’ vehicles to catch engaging in a quick smash and grab) but this hasn’t made up for problems earlier in the year. Fraud and forgery is intriguing area. The Met’s definition of this is “Dishonestly deceiving to obtain either property or a pecuniary advantage. Recorded crime statistics are collected for: fraud by company director; false accounting; cheque and credit card fraud; other frauds; bankruptcy and insolvency offences; forgery or use of false drug prescription; other forgery; vehicle/driver document fraud. Fraud is mainly a crime against commercial organisations” Why this should be becoming so much more prevalent in Ealing is not obvious, but I shall have an opportunity to discuss this with the police shortly. As a crime mainly affecting businesses, increases in fraud are very unlikely to affect the public’s perception of their personal safety.It does raise the broader question of what contribution a local authority can make to law and order. The Council’s initiatives of alley gating, funding PCSOs, more and better CCTV might be expected to have an impact on street crime and burglary and the figures are consistent with this.Eric Leach’s complaint that police don’t have a station in his ward is just silly in the age of the mobile phone and internet. What matters is where the police do their work and that will be driven by where crime occurs, which is not distributed evenly across the borough, let alone London or the country. By the way, there’s a rumour that Eric Leach will be standing as an independent candidate in Walpole ward in the local elections on 6th May. Any truth in this?
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