101

As of yesterday, 1 April, the new non-emergency number for the police, 101, replaces the old 0345 number. For the full story see the recent 'ecops' mailing from the police (sign up here to join the mailing list).

Switchover to 101

FROM Sunday (April 1), Cambridgeshire police can only be contacted on 101 for all non-emergency calls.

The old 0345 number will be switched off and a recorded message will tell people to call 101.

The old number has remained in use alongside 101 for the past year to allow people time to get used to the new number.

…

People should continue to call 999 when an immediate response is needed, for example if a crime is happening, someone suspected of a crime is nearby, or someone is in danger.

Blowing a Raspberry

It was disappointing news to many, including myself, that the police decided to 'cancel' this weekend's planned Strawberry Fair. Yes, it isn't everyone's idea of fun, but for many people in Cambridge and elsewhere it is, and the police could (and should) have concentrated on those causing trouble, and leave the vast majority who like the festival and the music to enjoy their day in sun.

Instead, they decided to 'cancel' the event by withdrawing their support. The City Council didn't help either by changing the licensing arrangements this year. The outcome was that the strawberry fair organising committee concluded they couldn't continue with this year's event as planned.

Not surprisingly in today's world of social networking sites and the like, an alternative event is now planned for the common. The reaction of the authorities to this says a lot about how the police and government view their role at the moment. Their view seems to be that if a group of people want to do something, it is up to the authorities to graciously grant us their permission, and if people aren't prepared to concede to every bit of regulatory control on the grounds of health and safety or whatever else the government thinks is good for us - which in itself is a constantly moving target - the authorities will just say no and think that is reasonable. The City Council have been in emergency planning mode - I couldn't tell you much about what precautions they have taken (for some reason I wasn't invited to the Councillor's briefing - UPDATE - it appears I was invited but only using my Council email address, which it turns out randomly stopped forwarding emails to me, so I didn't know about the invitation - apologies to those concerned for suggesting this was intentional - I give up completely on the Council's email system - I am now telling everyone to only use my personal address!). The police on the other hand were reported in the CEN as saying: 'Riot police will be on standby at an illegal gathering to replace Strawberry Fair' (my emphasis).

A letter in today's Cambridge Evening News makes the point I was thinking reading the CEN report: 'Since when was picknicking on common land illegal? What precise law are we breaking?'

The authorities clearly have a duty to protect public safety, and plan ahead where there are potential threats, but this whole episode illustrates the extent to which the police mindset is still very much in authoritarian New Labour mode - we don't like something, we'll stop it no matter what. My personal view is that as long a people behave responsibly and in accordance with the law, the police and authorities should be there to actively support them and protect them from those who don't behave in accordance with the law or with due responsibility for those around them. They can't be bothered to enforce the law in really very simple situations like cyclists riding at night without lights, or cars parked in mandatory cycle lanes - you would at least thought that they could police events like Strawberry Fair by concentrating on the small minority of law-breakers, rather than stopping everyone's fun.

Personally I don't plan to enjoy the sunshine on Midsummer Common tomorrow with friends, but I hope if lots of people do make that choice, they have a good time, but also think about the neighbouring residents and be responsible. If people do cause trouble, the police should focus on the troublemakers, and remember that they are partly responsible for the situation by regulating out of existence the formal organisation for the Fair - leaving behind an event over which they have much less control.

Why Government is so expensive, part II

A few days ago I wrote about why government is so expensive, and why the Conservatives are right that it is not only better to reduce the cost of government (rather than increase taxes) to fix Labour's debt crisis, it is mandatory. I said:

 'Partnership working' is another recent entry in public sector buzzword bingo - in theory, great, it means (I think) public bodies working together to try running services better. In practice, there are pots of money available from government for their pet projects, whole teams of project managers and press officers producing plans to demonstrate that the right boxes are being ticked to show people are working together - along with endless meetings and powerpoint presentations taking up vast amounts of time, and involving senior public sector employees

As if by magic, an example turns up. The Community Alcohol Partnership from the humble Councillor's point of view is simply the police working with trading standards to tackle underage drinking, and they had been working in Coleridge as part of a pilot project. They visited places like Coleridge Rec on a friday or saturday night in response to complaints about under-age drinking, so the police can confiscate alcohol and contact parents as necessary, and trading standards can work with the shops who sold the alcohol to find out how it came into the possession of under 18s, and try to stop those sales in future.

All very sensible - except all seemed to have gone quiet from the community alcohol partnership, so this week I made enquiries as to what had happened to it - here is the reply:

As you had observed there has been less activity in recent weeks.

There are a couple of reasons for this.  Firstly, the Adult Alcohol Commissioning Group are now acting as the CAP Board to oversee the roll-out of all CAPs in the county (including the existing ones) This measure was put in place earlier this year primarily to address some of the issues that had arisen. For example, they found that, without any formal structure or agreements, the representation of some partners on the working group changed several times - and some new representatives did not consider CAP a priority. This made it difficult to undertake any activities requiring input of certain partners.

The CAP Board will oversee and commit resources to the CAP (i.e. influence the CAP on the ground - making sure the working group has the necessary resources to deliver the relevant activities) and by getting formal agreements signed by each partner (SLAs) of their contribution to the scheme. A Terms of Reference for the working group and the SLAs will be drafted shortly and we hope to have these signed ASAP.

In addition, there is currently an evaluation of the CAP's work by xxx Ltd which will identify how the CAP can be improved as they move forward. It is anticipated that some of the aforementioned formal agreements and structures will be among the suggested improvements going forward. Once the evaluation report is published the CAP Board can consider the findings and influence how the CAP continues in the city.

And to think that if you believe Labour, it is vital we have so much government and any cost cutting would immediately impact doctors, nurses and teachers on the front line - absolute nonsense. One Conservative policy I really like is the idea of a directly elected police chief. Someone local residents can hold accountable, and to thom they could say that they just want the police to work with other groups to tackle the problem of underage drinking in their neighbourhood, and if they can't do it without a commissioning group, an oversight board, contracts, service level agreements, and a consultants report, they won't be in charge for very much longer...

Police Investigating Coleridge Murder

For those that don't read the Cambridge Evening News, police are investigating an apparent murder that occurred at around 7am this morning in Fanshawe Road, Coleridge.

It is because such events are thankfully so rare in Cambridge, there will doubtless be many shocked local residents, but I understand from police that although it may take some time to thoroughly investigate this incident, they don't have reason to believe at this stage that there should be a wider community impact.

Police Raid Coleridge Brothels

Sounds like the police had an exciting last couple of weeks, after two suspected brothels were raided in Coleridge, on Perne Road and Lichfield.

In total, three people were arrested for people trafficking, sexual exploitation and immigration offences, and enquiries continue.

I think this type of of crime is fairly rare in Cambridge, but the police would welcome any further information and if you suspect that properties in your area are being used in the Sex Trade then please call 0345 456 456 4 or Crimestoppers 0800 555 111 where you can place an anonymous call.

Going off at a huge tangent, I a reminded of the ludicrous injustice of the press coverage of Lord Ashcroft over the last week - notably by the BBC.

Lord Ashcroft founded crimestoppers over 20 years ago - and since has put up many rewards that have resulted in convictions for very serious offences. He has also been a very significant donor to Anglia Ruskin University - which educated him and gave him the start of his successful business career. In short, he is a community minded philanthropist, of the type that this country should be very grateful for. He also donates money to the Conservative party, and one of his 'crimes' in the eyes of the Labour party (and therefore the BBC) is that he has tried to donate that money in a way it is most likely to be effective in helping secure the election of a Conservative government (by supporting marginal constituencies). Good - if I donate money to the Conservatives, it is also 100% because I want to see that money used to get Conservatives elected, and I'm yet to see any evidence that the sole intention of Lord Ashcroft's donations is anything other than to help facilitate the election of a Conservative government.

The real risk with large donors to a political party is where the party is so dependent on those donations that they are prepared to, for example, put the interests of the donor above the interests of the general electorate when deciding policy. Lord Ashcroft's donations at their current levels (less than 5% of the party's funding since Cameron became leader) simply dont come into this category. With Labour, it is not so much a risk, but a case of to what extent exactly public policy is being influenced by their major donors. There was Bernie Ecclestone and tobacco advertising, and their other individual donors (many of whom share Lord Ashcroft's perfectly legitimate 'non-dom' tax status) who seem to have remarkable influence over government. Why exactly was Lord Paul appointed to the Privy Council is a serious question that awaits an answer.

But the biggest paymasters of course are the unions. In 2009, over 60% of Labour's donations came from the unions. The mere threat of withdrawing this funding can change Labour policy, and it is at the unions behest that the country has embarked on the massive increase in the public sector wage bill, that is a key reason for the debt crisis that threatens to engulf the UK economy (particularly if Labour is re-elected).

As ever, there is a special brand of hypocrisy involved whenever the Lib Dems get on their high horse, as Vince Cable did at [deputy] Prime Ministers questions this week. You would never have guessed that the  Lib Dems campaign at the 2005 election was funded by a £2.4m donation from convicted fraudster Michael Brown - quite why they haven't had to pay back this money to the people it was allegedly stolen from I never could understand.

The bottom line is that democracies inevitably produce political parties - and unless you want (even more) of your taxes being spent supporting political parties you vehemently disagree with, the political parties need donors. Ideally lots of smaller donors so that no one donor can exert a significant influence. But none of this excuses the rank hypocrisy of Labour and the Lib Dems over this issue, or the extraordinary coverage given to Lord Ashcroft by the BBC over a number of days - when there are no allegations he has done anything illegal and broken any rules. Was it really more imporant to talk about Lord Ashcroft for a sixth day, after our Prime Minister had told the Chilcott enquiry the military had been given all the equipment it requested, and the General insisted they hadn't? We are about to go into a general election, the outcome of which could determine the prosperity of the Country for a generation if the crisis in public debt is not tackled - and this is where the media should be focussing their attention.

Police Surgery

Our police community support officers would like to welcome Coleridge residents to the Beat Surgery that is happening on the 19/02/2010 at Lichfield Community Hall on Lichfield Road. The surgery will take place between 7pm and 8pm. The surgery is just a chance for residents to come and speak to our PCSOs about any issues that you have or just to meet them.

Police Surgery, 29th January

Our police community support officers will be holding a surgery on 29th January, at St Thomas Hall, Ancaster Way.

This Surgery is a chance for residents to discuss any policing or community safety problems in your neighbourhood and to meet your local community policing team - all local residents are welcome to call in some time between 7 and 8pm.

Police Surgery next week

The Coleridge neighbourhood policing team are holding one of their regular surgeries next week.

It will be held on Thursday 17/12/09 between 19:00 and 20:00, at the Lichfield Road Community Hall.

Residents are welcome to come along and have a chat with our local police community support officers Mark Mitcham and Mick Stribling, to give them any feedback or raise any local policing issues that you would like to see action on.

Police respond to unlit cyclists on Mill Road

It was good to see a police officer checking for cyclists without lights on Mill Road tonight. An earlier survey by Coleridge Conservatives, that hit the front page of Cambridge News, showed that 50% of lights that should have been present and on were either absent, dim or obscured. We don't know exactly how many people were therefore not properly lit (as we were checking light positions independently, not cycles as a whole) but it would obviously have had to have been at least half.

The officer I spoke to tonight reckoned 80% of people he'd seen weren't lit properly. That's a damning statistic, but I'm glad that they haven't just done a symbolic annual check on Sidney Street but seem to be taking the problem seriously.

Tackling Crime and Burglary

A number of agencies and organisations will be available on Saturday, September 19 at Brookfield's Hospital between 10am and 3pm to give residents advice about protecting themselves, and their homes.

- Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service will visit homes and advise on smoke alarm fitting and arson prevention.

- Cambridge City Council will be on hand to talk about community safety issues, anti-social behaviour and graffiti.

- Cambridgeshire Constabulary will give residents advice about burglary prevention and law and order

- The Bobby Scheme will be offering home security improvements to the elderly and vulnerable.

Residents will also be able to get information about Neighbourhood Watch schemes, and find out more about keeping in touch with local police officers through the e-cops email service.

Any local residents in Coleridge, Romsey or the surrounding area concerned about crime and community safety in their area are welcome to come along and get some help and advice.

If you have any questions please contact community safety at the city council on 01223 457950.

Police Respond to Speed Priority

The police have been in action today on Coleridge Road checking for speeding vehicles, following the successful campaign by Andy Bower to make speeding on residential roads a neighbourhood policing priority.

East Area neighbourhood Sargeant Mark Kathro issued at least one ticket for significantly exceeding the 30mph speed limit, after several previous sessions of speed checks by our PCSOs that resulted in advice being issued to residents.

I don't want to see the police issuing any tickets, but exceeding the 30mph speed limit on residential roads is socially unacceptable and increases the risk of any collision causing serious injuries - many people we speak to want action to stop drivers breaking the speed limit. The message needs to be spread far and wide that if you speed on residential roads in Coleridge you could get a ticket, so please just don't do it.

Many thanks to Mark and his team for following up on this neighbourhood priority - if communicating the message that action is being taken results in fewer people breaking the speed limit, it will be a good result in terms of residents concerns being taken into account, community engagement by the neighbourhood policing team, and real action resulting from this.

Police Surgery Wednesday

Our Police Community Support Officers Mark Mitcham and Mick Stribling will be holding a Beat Surgery on Wednesday 19th August. Local residents are all welcome to just turn up and meet our PCSOs to disscuss any crime and anti-social behaviour problems that you may be facing where you live.

The surgery will be held from 19:00 to 20:00 at Lichfield Road Community Hall just off Cherry Hinton Road.

Parkside Police Station Open Day

Cambridge residents and visitors are being given a rare chance to find out more about some the most interesting areas of policing.

Parkside Police Station is hosting an open day to give people a taste of forensics, catching criminals and what it feels like to literally be a criminal. It will take place this Sunday, July 19 between noon and 4pm.

The custody suite, where suspects are kept following arrest, will be opened up to visitors and fingerprint experts will be on hand to ink little volunteers' fingers. Visitors can see up close a CCTV van, a police motorcycle, a police traffic car, an accident wreck and even the police helicopter.

Cambridgeshire Police Authority and a recruitment team will be present, along with a crime scene investigator, neighbourhood policing officers and drugs awareness advisers. A speed gun will be used as part of a children's speed trial and a police dog will put on a display. Residents will also be able to get crime prevention advice.

This is a fun, free family event and everyone is welcome!

Birdwood Road Antisocial Behaviour

The police and Councils need to get a grip of problems with anti-social behaviour in the Birdwood Road/St Thomas Rd area of Coleridge.

For months residents have been complaining of problems from a group of young people, with allegations of intimidation, late night noise, vandalism, underage drinking and drunkenness and various traffic offences involving mopeds.

Sadly last Saturday this escalated into an incident that a police response team was called to, and I understand two local residents were arrested following some type of alleged altercation.

It is clearly now a matter for the police to investigate the incident that occurred, but I am concerned about how effective the police and Council have been in responding to previous complaints about anti-social behaviour. I have already asked the new neighbour Sargeant for East Area to report back on what incidents have been reported in the area recently, and have asked the City Council to deploy its mobile CCTV cameras in the area to try calming down the situation, and hold a residents meeting.

I do know that local residents are very unhappy, and want effective action.

New police non-emergency number

I've had this from e-cops:

"From Monday 15th June 2009 (Today), the non-emergency telephone number for

Cambridgeshire Constabulary is changing. The new number is

0345 456 456 4.

Please save this in your address books for future reference. The old

number, 0845 456 456 4, will continue to operate alongside the new number

until April 2011.

The move will allow people with call packages which provide free local

calls to benefit as 0345 numbers are classed as local calls.

Remember - in an emergency, always dial 999. You should dial 999 if lives

are in danger or if there is serious risk of injury, if a serious crime is

happening or if a criminal is still at the scene. In all other cases, and

for general enquiries, please call us on 0345 456 456 4."

I guess this is part of the backlash against 0845 numbers being used in public services. These calls can be expensive, particularly from mobile phones, and sometimes involve revenue sharing where the party being called actually receives some of the call revenue. An 0345 number should be better from a call cost point of view - but what would have been wrong with an 01223 number...

Police Raid Golding Road Address

I've had the following from the police via ecops:

"Yesterday a warrant was carried out at an address in Golding road. As a result of this a large amount of what is believd to be class A drugs were discovered and five people were arrested. Class A drugs include Heroin and Crack Cocaine. This warrant was carried out because of information received from local residents and your local officers. If this is proved to be Class A then the total value would be in the thousands of pounds, a significant amount. I would like to thank all the people that gave me information and please continue to do so. Sometimes it may seem we are not acting fast enough but we have to make sure these things are carried out at the right time."

If this is the address I am thinking of, then the police have known about it for ages - I certainly passed on resident concerns over a year ago, and I will be interested to know the outcome. If the people arrested are found guilty of serious drug offences, I will have questions for several authorities about why this was allowed to go on so long.

However, incidents of this type are relatively rare in Coleridge, and with the support of local residents, we can make sure dealing in illegal drugs is stamped on very hard and as quickly as possible.

Police Surgery

Coleridge PCSOs Mark Mitcham and Mike Stribling will be holding a Beat Surgery on 22nd May, and local residents are encouraged to turn up to express views or concerns about local crime and anti-social behaviour issues, and to answer questions.

The Surgery will take place on the 22nd May 2009 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm at Lichfield Community Hall.

The price of victory

While Cllr Howell and I were securing a surprise victory in the battle at the city council's East Area Committee last Thursday to have speeding dealt with by proper monitoring and police enforcement someone was busy stealing my bicycle wheels outside the Cherry Trees Day Centre.

I hadn't had a bike stolen for three or four years now so perhaps I should count myself lucky it was only the wheels - time to heed the advice of my colleague in Kings Hedges and have it security-marked.

I suspect the thieves probably weren't aware that there were four police officers/PCSOs in the building at the time, which does cause me to reflect on how it can possibly be good value for money for those four public servants to have sat through hours of unrelated business before getting to the Neighbourhood Policing agenda item... Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman Richard Normington pointed out yesterday that the cost of these meetings per head of the general population in attendance is £195!

Finally, I'd like to thank Labour Coleridge Councillor Lewis Herbert for offering me a lift home after the incident...although in the event that didn't quite fit into my plans for a quick pint!

Bollards!

Damage to the traffic calming on Radegund Road is getting beyond a joke. I've reported the latest damage to the Council here via www.fixmystreet.com, but this seems to happen on a weekly basis. if this was caused by a vehicle the whole thing would be written off, so it is clearly vandalism...

UPDATE: Already had a response back from both the police who will be stepping up patrols and the County who will be getting highways to fix the problem!

Minor victory in war on jargon - Bigger victory on crime reporting

It is timely that the BBC is reporting a crackdown on the use of jargon in local authorities, as there was a minor victory for common sense at the Strategy and Resources scrutiny committee on Monday. Whilst considering the future role of the police presentations and priority setting at Area committees (one part of these committees that is working reasonably well), we were asked to approve the following as an 'area for development':

"Some confusion has been highlighted in relation to the name Safer Neighbourhoods since it changed from Neighbourhood Policing. A standard introduction to the agenda item by the Chair of each Committee to explain the item will help ensure context to the presentation delivered."

The name "safer communities" in this context is meant to be more reflective of the partnership between the police and Council, but in reality nobody who isn't intimate with local authority speak has got the slightest idea what it means. So I proposed that we simply replace the above paragraph as an area for development with the simple proposal to change the name back to neighbourhood policing! And remarkably, the committee and leader agreed this change to the recommendations. 

More significantly, the committee agreed to my request to add a further area for development, namely to look at how crime and incidents of anti-social behaviour are recorded, to ensure all crimes and incidents are recorded to ensure they are taken into account when setting police priorities, and to allow Councillors to feed back the response (or lack of) to each incident that is brought to our attention. In short, I want to see zero tolerance policing, where every incident is recorded, analysed, and resources targetted appropriately.

There has been huge progress made in neighbourhood policing over the last few years - which I put down to two factors, the presence of Police Community Support Officers who provide a very visible presence on the streets (I frequently see our Coleridge PCSOs out on their bikes or on foot), and the opportunity for politicians at a local level to take part in the process, where I think the main benefit is not that we can set priorities for neighbourhood policing (which is ostensibly the aim of our involvement), but because we now have the opportunity to scrutinise the actions of the police, and the way in which they are responding to local problems. Roll on the next Conservative government which is planning to further this approach and give local people much more power of the type I have been fighting for - they have pledged to "make the police accountable to the people they serve through directly elected commissioners, crime maps and quarterly beat meetings".

Outside the realm of Council meetings, my colleague on Coleridge Conservatives Andy Bower has been doing sterling work chasing up the many incidents of graffiti particularly along Radegund Road and Davy Road. One of the main areas of graffiti was cleaned off very promptly (compare the picture below from last night with this two days ago) but there are still significant problems, and we are trying to get all these incidents recorded as crimes and persuade the police to take them seriously.