Borough 'Still Way Short on Police Numbers'

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Candidates for Mayor challenged on lost and missing police officers

Cllr James Cousin has issued his challenge after the latest police figures revealed that Wandsworth still has 84 fewer constables than it did a little over a decade ago.

The Met's own figures show that Wandsworth division currently has 578 uniformed police officers in post. In February 1997, figures given to Parliament by the Home Office showed that the number of officers on duty in the borough stood at 662. 

The current Mayor and Home Office ministers have consistently argued that this gap in police manpower has been plugged by the introduction of community support officers (PCSOs) – even though these do not have the full range of powers available to a uniformed constable.

These community officers have no special powers to arrest to people committing a crime, unless they use the authority available to any citizen under "citizens arrest" powers. In fact they are trained not to arrest offenders they witness committing a crime but to instead call a "constable".  They are however able to issue fixed penalty notices for littering, dog fouling, or riding bicycles on the pavement and they can authorise the removal of abandoned vehicles.

Even though they have such limited powers, the council has welcomed their introduction to deal with minor "quality of life" issues.  But they feel Wandsworth has also been short-changed in its allocation of PCSOs. There should be 84 of these patrolling the borough's streets – but the latest figures show there are only 72.

Cllr Cousins, who is the council's executive member for regeneration and community safety said: "Seeing as the allocation of police officers in London is now tightly controlled by the Mayor and his Metropolitan Police Authority, residents have a right to know from each of the candidates precisely how they propose restoring all the borough's missing police officers. Officers who were once stationed in Wandsworth have been transferred to other parts of London and never replaced. What this means is that we now have something like three per cent of London's police officers to deal with around four per cent of London's crime."

He praised the PCSOs but said they cannot replaced fully-fledged police officers.

Cllr Cousins added, "What we now need to hear from the three main candidates for Mayor is what they are going to do to ensure that Wandsworth receives its full allocation of officers. Local people pay their taxes and they deserve the same amount of protection from crime as other Londoners."

February 15, 2008