Greenwich Peninsula crime spike causes alarm

A number of incidents across Greenwich Peninsula in recent days have caused concern among residents as shops have seen robberies and a number of cars broken into.

Two co-ops in the area were closed last night after reported armed robberies.

That follows a number of vehicles being damaged in underground car parks in preceding days.

Concerns are also present over robberies along the Thames path.

Response

Some residents have expressed concern over what is perceived as a weak response from police.

Greenwich Council have announced an event via their company DG Cities. It does have the whiff of reinventing the wheel at public expense rather than directly spending to address the issue.

Locals complain of contacting authorities and gaining no response, yet Greenwich are paying their own company to conduct an event to:

“Find out your experiences of crime, how you currently report it and your barriers to reporting it. The workshop aims to:

– Give residents and opportunity to discuss their experiences with crime on the Peninsula.

– Understand what stops you from reporting crime on the Peninsula

– Understand potential solutions to report crime and prevent it.”

DG Cities

DG Cities is a wholly owned Greenwich Council company. It’s the only area that has ever seen Community Infrastructure Levy funding aside from Crossrail.

Recently the council made a big issues of using them to address anti social behaviour on Barnfield Estate such as dumping rubbish, stating “The Royal Borough of Greenwich has commissioned DG Cities to design and implement a behaviour change and innovation campaign to tackle illegal fly-tipping in the area.”

Given there’s areas of the borough where flytipping is endemic almost daily (the council pick it up but never enforce via hidden cameras, for example) does scarce funding need to go on “projects” via their own companies?

I could show them a number of spots where for 15 years in Abbey Wood rubbish is dumped extremely regularly and they’ve never bothered to put a camera up to track offenders.

But a trial via their own company? Take the money!

Previously DG Cities spent money on driverless car trials on the Peninsula and “innovative” ways to travel. Meanwhile the authority had no money for simple projects to upgrade pedestrian links around the Peninsula.

One does wonder if this is the next GLLaB and will swallow ever more funding in years to come.

Police

Then of course there’s central Government cuts which have impacted police budgets heavily since 2010.

To stave off job losses, police stations were sold off across London. That saw Greenwich police station sold alongside Westcombe Park to name but two.

Eventually selling off assets could only stem the flow of cuts in London for so long, so officer numbers were reduced.

That is now changing, but given the vast increases in both overall London and local population numbers, police officer numbers per head of population remain far below 2010 levels.