Crystal Palace SNT receive top award from Commissioner 16.01.2008

The Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Team were presented with an award from the Commissioner Sir Ian Blair at a ceremony held in central London on Wednesday 16 January 2008, after beating off competition to win the Metropolitan Police Service's "Best Safer Neighbourhood Team" award for 2007.

Sergeant Richard Horne, Head of the Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Team receiving the award from Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair

The Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Team were set up April 2006. Crystal Palace ward was the busiest crime hot spot on the Borough of Bromley. It is an area of a large outer borough that extends into the inner city and presented massive challenges to the new team in the form of open drug use, crack houses, youth gangs and was blighted by graffiti and signal crimes. Soaring offences of street robbery connected with the busy bus and railway transport systems and widespread anti-social behaviour were sapping public confidence and leading to a climate of extreme fear in the local areas such as the Anerley Vale Estate, South Penge Park Estate and St Hugh's Estate.

The team set about changing this situation. They followed the Safer Neighbourhood model researching their community, setting up a representative panel, they publicised their work and began to robustly deal with the problems, building partnerships and relationships that made a difference. What followed was a real engagement and understanding of the issues that mattered most to the local residents becoming set as the policing priorities for the team. This was not soft policing; but hard edged raiding and closing crack houses, taking on the most troublesome individuals with ABCs and ASBO interventions, enforcing dispersal areas, evicting problem tenants and problem solving the environment and longstanding crime issue through a local Operations group for the Ward with partners from the Safer Bromley Partnership. Their list of interventions and initiatives is impressive:

• Crack Houses closed

• Test purchase operations with trading standards for sales of knives / alcohol / fireworks

• Police cadets for leaflet drops

• Surveys of estates

• Youth surgery set up

• Estate caretakers involved in process / solutions

• Joint patrols with local authority wardens and parks patrols

• Truancy patrols

• Robbery Squad patrols

• Follow up visits to all victims

• Graffiti clean ups

• Improved lighting / fencing / entry phones + repairs to estate

• Opening of a community surgery on estate

• Dispersal orders enforced

• Street briefings undertaken

• Neighbourhood watch set up

• Youth diversion activities supervised by SNT

The Crime reductions in the year to date are equally impressive:

Robbery down 32%
Theft person down 15%
Theft from motor vehicle down 11%
Wounding down 24%
Criminal Damage down 29%

On a visit to Bromley the Commissioner was invited to join the Crystal Palace SNT and go out on patrol and he was invited to check for himself the impact of the team by calling on local residents, all of whom were hugely supportive of the team.

Chief Inspector Marshall Kent said:"This is a team that delivers. This is a team that has made a difference in the lives of their community. This is a team that has regained and reclaimed a neighbourhood on behalf of their community. I am really impressed with the energy and commitment of the Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Team in engaging with members of the community. The team have taken the process of community engagement and prioritising local issues to the next level and are committed to delivering excellence in this model of policing, with the local community having a real say on local policing issues and directing their teams to tackle the problems that matter most to local people".

Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Charles Griggs said: "The Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhood Team have robustly and tirelessly target the issues and perpetrators that the people of the ward want us to deal with most of all, bringing together action and interventions where they matter most at the neighbourhood level. This award is a testament to their hard work and commitment in tackling these issues and shows the great strength of community partnership that we have here in Bromley".

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