"Crime" is slashed on streets of fear Feb 22 2002




South London Press


EXTRA bobbies on the beat have slashed street crime in south London's most crime-ridden borough by 25 per cent.

At the beginning of this month, 40 traffic cops were drafted in to Lambeth to bolster the robbery squad in a bid to fight massive levels of street crime.

Robberies in the borough increased by 81 per cent between 1998 and 2001, and nudged 1,000 last October - the highest in Europe.

But the Safer Streets initiative did not get off to a good start.

On Monday February 4 - while the 40 traffic cops and their robbery squad counterparts had a day-long tactics briefing in the town hall - robbers got busy on the streets, pouncing on 23 victims.

The next day, when the newly bolstered squad took to the streets, robbers struck a whopping 46 times.

During the first week of the experiment, there was a 13 per cent increase in robberies compared to the previous week while nine other boroughs running Safer Streets schemes saw an overall ten per cent decrease.

But during the second week of the experiment - between February 11-18 - things improved dramatically.

Reported street robberies fell by 25 per cent from an average of 24 a day for 2001/2 to an average of 18.

That figure beats the cops' own target of keeping them in the low 20s.

In all, 48 people were arrested during the first week of Safer Streets and 44 more in the second week.

Three men were arrested and charged after three young boys were robbed at knifepoint, one man was held on suspicion of robbing elderly women around Stockwell Tube station.

Another man was charged after a snatch robbery on a moped and three youths were taken into custody after a robbery at Stockwell skateboard park.



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