Transcript

Democratic services via Councillor Gilbert has dealt with the matter, I believe. Is that correctly? Thank you. Live facial recognition presentation. We have one this evening, so let's leave that one for the moment. Questions for the superintendent at written answers were submitted. And the pro forma project for the board to be circulated via email to the board with the final list. And that was circulated, but there will be a few words on that one this evening. Thank you. Can we now go on to the first item on the agenda, which is the data pack, and over to Inspector Pinson. Are you doing that? No, no, sorry. Thank you, Chair. I'm James Griffin. I'm one of the three police inspectors for Wandsworth. I cover the tooting, a cluster of seven wards in tooting. And Chris here covers Battersea and Steve. To my left covers Putney, just so you know who we are. Is there a PowerPoint coming up, Callum? One minute, sorry. Sorry about that. We're going to be looking at the -- it's in the pack for this evening, what I'm about to talk about. What I'm just going to mention briefly, if that may appear on the screen, it may just be in the pack in front of you, is some of the main crime types that affect residents in the neighborhood. That's the one. Burglary robbery, theft from person, so that's things like pickpocketing, or snatching, sexual offenses, theft from a motor vehicle, and theft of a motor vehicle. There we are. Thank you. Sorry, Callum. You'll see from the data yourself, you can pore over it in your own time. I'm happy to take some questions in a minute. You'll see burglary there. The figures you're looking at is 12 months from September 23 to the end of August 2024. And the percentage comparison, so for burglary where it says down 8.8%, that's compared to the same 12 months from September 22 to August 23. So you'll see there that burglary has gone down. This is for the whole of Wandsworth, obviously. Robbery has gone up. Theft from person has gone up also. Whereas sexual offenses, theft from motor vehicle, and theft of motor vehicle have gone down. All these figures, I know lots of you like to look at data. The way that the Met has been collecting crime data changed in April this year with the advent of some new computer software called Connect. So there's one or two minor discrepancies which I'm not an expert in, but in terms of where you get your sources of data, these things might be miles out. But if you were to look at last year, they might be slightly different in the way MOPAC counts crimes just based on the software we use and the boxes officers tick when they're reporting crimes. But essentially they're the figures for the 12 months to the end of August this year. Chair, would you like me just to go through the slides? Can I have the next slide, then? This slide here briefly just shows a kind of more recent trend of those same offenses. So I'm looking at the spring into the summer here, so March to May and June to August. So you'll see, for example, burglary. There were 408 burglaries in the borough between March and May, and that rose to 454, hence it being in red for the summer period. And as you can see, those other figures there have increased on robbery, theft from the person and sexual offenses ever so slightly, whereas theft from motor vehicle and theft of motor vehicle have both reduced. There may be some around the theft from motor vehicle, there was a bit of a spate of Volkswagen badges being nicked from cars. Without wishing to be too blunt, eventually, of course, so many have been stolen that a thief will go elsewhere. I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt, because for counsel's disability, if you don't turn your microphones correctly, you can't hear a bad brief. I apologize, I can't get much nearer. I will speak slower, perhaps. Sorry about that. Next slide, please, Chris. There's only five or six slides, don't worry. And it's just a brief note around hate crime recordings between the same period, so September 23 to the end of August 24. The counting methodology has changed because of the computer software I mentioned earlier around we're now more accurate with the types of hate crime recorded. Of course, you can see here I've only used four main categories, just to show the kind of numbers of figures of people who report hate crime. Of course, we urge people to report hate crime of any description. And they're just the figures. There's no point in comparing to the year before, as I say, because the way it's counted would make it look, it wouldn't give a useful comparison. Next slide, please. Okay, so moving on to stop and search. In the borough of Wandsworth, from the 10th of September 23 to the 9th of September 24, 3,298 stop searches conducted. And 29.2% of those resulted in a positive sanction, i.e. the item or the thing officers were looking for was found. And then the next slide will show you then what happened to those, the people. Out of all the people, officers in Wandsworth stop searched, 15.8% of them were under 18 years of age. And 8.3% of them were female. Just to give you a sense of who officers are searching, there's far more detail on stop search on the source there, if anyone wishes to look. Next, please. More on stop search, I thought this would be a useful figures to look at. Just the racial code mentioned at the time of the search. You'll see the data there. 1.3% of people, sorry, 1.1% of people, my eyes, didn't state their code. And we used, officers used body-worn camera 98.1% of the time. Obviously, we're always looking to hit the 100% mark on that. And there may be some reason battery had died at the time. I couldn't tell you exactly why. But there are one or two fairly understandable reasons why body-worn camera may not have been utilized at the time. Perhaps officers were off duty on their way back to the station and wouldn't have had their camera with them. But obviously, some of you may be involved in scrutinizing stop search and will have had the chance to see a random selection of stop searches through the eyes of the officer's body-worn camera. And final slide, the result of stop searches, as mentioned earlier, 29% resulted in something being found. 538 people were arrested directly as a result of stop search. 13 were cautioned. 319 were given a community resolution, which may be, for example, cannabis, the first time you're found with cannabis, you may just be given a community resolution, i.e. you're aware this is an offense, you could receive a criminal record. So this is a kind of shot across the bow warning not to do that again. And there's other things like penalty notice for disorder, fixed penalty notice, or summons. And 2,334 people who were searched, there was no further action taken, i.e. nothing was found. That's all in terms of data, Chair, if there's any, I don't know if anyone has any questions. Does anyone have any questions? Jan?

Thank you. Data very clear. I do just wonder though, we previously used to see comparison figures with other boroughs in London. Is there any plan to move back to that? Yeah, apologies. I presented what I was asked to, but if you're interested, then I know it's something you'll have to do yourself, but the link there is, it's actually quite usable to click. I appreciate it would have been perhaps useful to look at Lambeth or Merton, or whichever borough you would choose to compare with. Previously, were those statistics provided by the police, or was there some council input to giving us the comparison figures? >> Thank you, Marlene. Just on the burglary figures, we've obviously just gone through a phase of having a number of people released from Wandsworth Prison, amongst other prisons. I just wondered whether there were any burglars amongst those who've been released that might have an impact that is the opposite of the decrease that we can see here, down 8.8 per cent in the 12 months from September 23 to August 24. Obviously that would not be a welcome development, but I'm guessing that might be a potential development. >> I think you'd be right. I wouldn't be able to say comments precisely on which burglaries had occurred by who. Lee was going to have a word on the part of your presentation. I can cover that later. It's one big agenda item, so I'll cover that off then. In the past, we actually did have the comparisons from other boroughs. So how on earth can we now compare with other boroughs? Because I really think that would help the police, that would help community safety, and that would reassure us as we have a commitment to the awareness of other issues in other boroughs. And I think that would be information which I think all would benefit. But I may speak on my own, but would other people support that? So anyway, I feel quite strongly about that, having had that experience before. And I really do think those who really are interested in this crime and reduction of crime would really enjoy that benefit of the information. Thank you, Chair. >> Good evening, everyone. I'm Superintendent Rajan. I'm the head of Wandsworth Neighbourhoods covering the whole borough. So just to catch up on that question, we've gone through some restructuring and some staffing issues around the intelligence unit and the analysts. So it's something we can take back. But even some of the analytical work that we need to do for our own crime fighting is left down to our staff to do. So anything that you need, like these figures, whilst we get the broad brush figures, the real analytics around it has to be done at a local level. So that sort of data can be presented at the local ward meetings. And it's something we will look at, whereas previously the way it was set up and the systems that were used were able to provide better, broader figures for us to compare from. Just to come back on that same point, one of the purposes of this board is to work with our local police, but also to hold them accountable on performance. And without that comparison, we find it very difficult to look at performance issues. Are we doing better or worse than comparable boroughs around? So whether it is an issue for the police to produce it or from within the board's own resources, I don't know. Previously we had them. But I don't think we can fulfill our function as a board in holding you to account without that comparison. Thank you. >> Chair, may I just come back on that one? Sorry. >> So what I will do is I will take it away. We will see what we can. And for the purpose of this meeting, whilst we haven't got that to hand, we could perhaps supply that. So it's part of the information pack for you. I'm slightly surprised -- sorry. >> I'm slightly surprised this doesn't work. I'm slightly surprised that people don't know there is a thing called the Stop and Search Dashboard, which is published every month and provides a plethora of data, which is comparisons between the boroughs. In fact, everything we've been asking for, comparisons over time. It's accessible to everybody. It's not just accessible to either police or ourselves in the Stop and Search side of things. Anyone can look at it and interrogate it. Sorry. I was told -- >> Thank you, Andy. But there is a link there on the presentation. So you're welcome to just press on the link on the presentation and you'll be able to see it. Or copy it and paste it onto an Internet. Thank you. Harry. Harry Gunawardene, Savannah State. Now, we have got an S&T group. We have a group of S&T group, Shaftesbury and Queenstown S&T, which has been operating for a number of years. And we meet about two or three a month. It all depends. And it's actually -- there are three or four police officers also in attendance. We find that it's very effective because a smaller group can actually speak out and get some sort of help. Now, what I want to know, how is the S&T, Shaftesbury and Queenstown fit in here? Because this is a big organization. So can somebody explain? >> Could you speak in your microphone? Harry, can you turn your mic off, please? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Your S&T chair, who is -- Jan, can you remind me of the -- your S&T chair is a board member. All the ward chairs are board members. And they report back to us. Go ahead, Harry. >> I'm also co-chair of the S&T. I chaired the meeting in September. So we find that it's very effective. So I just want to know how does that come -- how do we fit in here? Because we find that it's very easy for us to contact the team that actually attend the meetings very often. Can you switch your -- as I said, Harry, can you switch your mic off, please? Thank you. As I said, Harry, your chair is a board member and comes to these meetings and report back to these meetings. So I suggest, if I may, have a word with your chair about it. Thank you, Lisa. >> I don't know if I'm misunderstanding the question. What I would say is the Shaftesbury and Queenstown is one of my wards. I have eight wards in the Battersea cluster. And so the officers that come to you are my officers. And they will feed in through their sergeant to me around more priorities and things like that, as will the other eight. And we -- so that feed up comes up through the police side that way and then into Mr. Rajan, who the three of us essentially report into. So the whole of the borough's wards and their issues feed up to Mr. Rajan. I'm not sure if that's similar to the question you are -- helps with the question or not, but -- Sorry. Trevor Hutton, Becklands Road, Fersdown. We were told over a year ago that the data would be far more easily accessible and that it would be simple to actually extract data from that for our wards. That doesn't seem to have happened. And we've only just received data for the last four months that the system had blocked. Is that sort of going to be improved and people will be able to extract their own data rather than relying on data from up on high, so to speak? >> So there has been a transition from the old system to the new. The publicly accessible data I'm not sure is fully up to date at the moment because I think there have been a few issues in bringing it through. We are getting the data, but I don't think it's all necessarily translating into public forum at the moment. I think, James, the data you actually presented today is publicly available, isn't it? Yes, it's all publicly available, but I'll take your point about ward level because I couldn't find the ward level detail on publicly available systems. Obviously we have it in house. >> Harry, can it be rather quick? We need to go on to the next item. Thank you. >> My question has not been properly answered because we are in a group which has been operating for several years and it works properly, but now how are we associated with this? That's my question. Joan. >> I think Harry started by saying he's co-chair. We only have one chair listed, so Harry hasn't been clearly receiving the minutes and information that sends out, so perhaps if we amend our records it will be easier to bring Harry on board with how the structure works. >> Yes, we can, but there should only be one member attending. There should only be one board member, not two. Thank you. We take that offline. Thank you. Could we go on to the next item, please, which is the live facial recognition presentation. Thank you. >> Sorry, I'm just trying to share my screen as well. My name is Chris Pinson. I am the Inspector for Battersea Sector. I work alongside James and Steve, as James said earlier. As you can see, we have started trialing live facial recognition on the borough. Actually, if we start with the presentation, if you look at the slides there, that is actually an example of an operation taking place outside Clapham Junction Station. You can take in the signs are actually what goes up on the lampposts, et cetera, around the site. Just to give you that insight now, because obviously I go into it a bit further later on, and the van you see in the background of the left hand picture is actually the van with the cameras on it. Just to clarify, we don't use the local or the council CCTV cameras. They're not there all the time. We don't tee into them. This is specific cameras on a specific vehicle that moves around the Metropolitan Police, essentially, at the moment, and is deployed to certain areas. How is facial recognition used in policing? Essentially, there's full details on the link up there if you wish to take it down. It's on the website as well. It can be used in a number of ways. We use it essentially to prevent and detect crime. That's what it's about, trying to safeguard vulnerable people and to protect people from harm, essentially to keep everyone here and in London safe. We use it at this time, first of all, as a real time aid to help officers locate people on a watch list who are sought by the police, so our wanted offenders or people that maybe are under license for one reason or another, some sort of order of a court. Also, we use it as a retrospective system after an event to help identify people and whether their image matches other media on databases. The main way we're using it on Wandsworth Borough at the moment is the active deployments, the first one we're talking about there. To give you a little bit around the background on live facial recognition and the technology around it, we have trialled it with South Wales Police and that's working alongside the National Physical Laboratory, which as you can see there is a world leading center of excellence. This has been in development for a number of years and essentially trying to get it to the right level that it has value, is accurate and works effectively. There's previous testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and it essentially uses an algorithm to identify characteristics of a face to compare that with people on a known database. As you can see, the testing plan was designed to identify any impact it could have on protected characteristics, in particular race, age and gender. In terms of our deployments, it works by the cameras on that vehicle that you saw at the start will be focused in a particular area. The vehicle will be deployed to a specific area and the cameras are focused in small areas. It's not like a wide beam camera. It has to be focused into a very tight area. Those images as people walk through are live streamed to the facial recognition system and essentially compared in a matter of milliseconds against a database that we have. The watch list, this is, for example, to give you a reference point on the last one that I did, the watch list was of about 14,000 people. It's not everyone the police have ever come into contact with or had an image of. It is purely wanted offenders, people under license, some sort of order from the court, for example, and that list is updated on the morning of every deployment, basically straight before it happens because obviously we don't want to be arresting people that have been arrested the night before or whatever else it may be. The image is taken compared against the watch list. If it flags up to us to the requisite level, then that sends a notification through to the officers deployed around the vehicle who are all in uniform and they will then spot that person and go and engage with them. It's not an end point, I think, is the first thing to say. It's a starting point in that engagement. People don't get arrested straight away or anything like that. It's very much go and speak to the person, find out what's going on. You have to verify the identification, et cetera, et cetera, and do a number of checks. As I've already said in the last line there, it's not using lots and lots of different CCTV cameras. This is a deployed overt policing tactic to help locate limited people. It's not utilized for everyone else. For example, if you walk through the camera, it takes your image, and your image is not on the watch list, it is deleted straight away. We do not retain the information. The only information that is retained is if we get a positive identification. That image is retained for 31 days in case it gets challenged in court, for example, if the identification itself is challenged by the person who is engaged with. In terms of how we decide where we deploy live facial recognition, essentially it's utilizing data of high harm crime, particularly violence against women and girls, and knife crime. Also we do consult with partners in the community around it. For example, a colleague of mine presented to the Independent Advisory Group last month. Marlene's been down to it, as I think Sean has as well. It's very much an open thing. We are very welcoming. If people from the community want to come down, or if you see it going on, please do come and speak to us, because we are happy to talk about the process and what goes on, try and demystify it a little bit. As you can see, the second question, if you're in an area, it's pretty overt. The van there is grey. The other van that we had on the deployment I had is bright red. It's a great big van stood on the pavement, and there are signs within probably the surrounding 20 plus meters. For the next question, people are not funneled into it. There are opportunities. If people don't want to go through it, they don't have to. They can cross the road, they can go wherever they wish. Essentially, people are not corralled towards it or anything like that. I've already answered the fourth bit here in relation to retention. In terms of results on Wandsworth borough, we've had eight deployments in Wandsworth, three of which have been outside Clapham Junction and five in Tooting Broadway. Last two were at the end of September, and we should have another one coming up fairly soon. As you can see, in terms of results, we've had 31 arrests. Every single one of those has been a positive identification i.e. the system has flagged them to us, we have engaged, and they have been confirmed to be the same person it was thought to be. As you can see, one of those subjects have been wanted for 13 years. I can certainly say from my experience of it, there's no way I would have recognized one of the people who was identified and stopped and spoken to. That was only two years later, but they had visibly changed so much that it was very hard. Without seeing it, you wouldn't know. The system is, from my point of view, quite impressive in terms of what it does. It will pick up from a cap or a hood. It will still pick up if it sees a significant portion of the face. It's quite impressive. From my point of view, at least. As you can see, there's been another 38 interactions with people on top of that. That's an identification, but some that isn't wanted. It's those orders from the court that I was talking to you about and referring to. That could be for any number of things. They may be on license, etc. As you can see, in terms of comparisons with other areas where it's been deployed, very similar numbers to Croydon that have had the deployments. Actually, it's some of the highest activations the system has had within the Metropolitan Police area. As I've referred to, the last ones were in September. It's also been deployed not just in Wandsworth, but in Kingston. There are other locations being considered by the team that run it. I think that is the end of my presentation. Thank you, Chris. Does anyone have any questions? Thanks. One of the issues that came up when this was first being mooted as a new form of technology to help police fight crime, when I think it was being tested out, was that there was an issue with the system not really differentiating between certain groups of people. For example, it seemed to be better at doing facial recognition of white people than it was of black people, just to put that out there. I just wondered, can you guarantee that the system has now improved beyond that point. That clearly would be completely insupportable for us to be going ahead with that as an ongoing problem. I hope you are going to reassure me that that has been completely resolved. Thank you. I can certainly assure you that that's not something I'm aware of. I've been assured that it doesn't matter, gender, ethnicity, et cetera, et cetera. The system works to the same level regardless. That's my understanding, certainly. I don't think we'd be utilising it otherwise from a policing point of view these days. I'd like to think not certainly. Angela. Give me some kind of understanding. It's really as I referred to in the presentation. It's around crime rates, high harm offenders and particularly knife crime and violence against women and girls at this time. We're also guided by the team that are out there doing it every day. As a borough, we are only doing it once or twice, well, maybe not even once or twice a month. The team who are out every day are learning, I think, every day and taking that learning back on how effective they can be. We will work with them very closely around where we feel it should be deployed and them about how it can be effectively deployed because not all locations are suitable. The police said how interesting and fantastic it was because you did Clanton Junction as well as Tooting Broadway. It must give a job satisfaction in a way that these guys who have been nicking bikes and doing whatever can get caught quicker. Thank you. If I could just come back to your question as to how do we pick locations. We will tell the team where we want to deploy or consider deployment. The team then look at why we want to deploy. They triage what our requests are. They then go and scope out the site, look at the footfall, the area and they've got their own criteria that they then assess our request again. Just to give you an idea around Clanton Junction, we don't do the back end of Clanton Junction because that borders on to Falconbrook as a ward. We do the main High Street because that again is more general transient population so the people on the other side who are local residents don't feel like it's been set there to target them. There's a lot of community impact considerations that go into that. The deployments are really successful and I'm sure in time the capacity and scope will increase. It's a really valuable tool for us and the other boroughs. Thank you. Councillor. Thank you Councillor Sean Lawless from Tooting Broadway. Thank you so much for what you've done in Tooting Broadway team and thanks for being so approachable I think with people coming up to you. I came and spoke to you with members of the MP's office a couple of times and you showed us how it works. One of the questions I was going to ask is and it may be anecdotal rather than statistical but what happens to crime in the surrounding area when this is taking place? I imagine one of the impacts that hopefully this has is it also deters people who might cause trouble from the area. I think that's a really good point. Thank you for that Councillor and something I should have referred to in the presentation actually. It's quite a fairly resource intensive tool. We have between five and ten probably officers on each deployment should we say because actually every arrest requires enough people to continue it while that person is dealt with in custody and obviously you don't want to have to stop after one person. In terms of that though that means that we will have officers near the van itself and the site but generally we'll also have officers probably across the road and at key points locally which means you do get when we deploy it's a very visible presence both there and in the surrounding location. Actually what we found is if they are visible therefore we get people from shops coming up and saying oh we've had no shoplifting today or a bar saying there have been no issues etc. etc. etc. There is a knock on effect which I think is really positive as well around it because obviously it's only that day but you get a really positive feel because that effect of that visibility of police officers and actually what we found is that continues for the following few days because it deters people on a slightly longer period because they've seen the police. They're oh I'll go somewhere else for example. So there is benefits to it definitely in that side of things as well. Jan. Thank you. You referred to the team running each session. Clearly the officers around are from our local resources. Is it a specialist team in the van handling the cameras? And you also referred to comparisons, other comparisons in the BCU. Again in the wider MET are our rates comparable. I'm assuming this is being used throughout the metropolitan area. Yes is I think the simple answer to probably both of those questions. So it is a specialist team in the vehicle should we say because it requires a certain amount of use of the technology etc. etc. The officers around it are your local officers generally which I think is good as well because we know people as well so it's quite useful but also it's quite a good way to get our officers engaging with other tools that the MET can use I think. So yes it is a specialist team and that is their pretty much sole role at the moment. They will be going from site to site to site across the whole MPS or certainly a proportion of it depending on how many teams there are. The second question I've got to remember now having answered it. I think I referred to it in the presentation. We compare with Croydon and we're both fairly high in terms of positive results. We're pretty much at the top of the MET in terms of positive results. But as I say it's also being deployed in Kingston as well to other local boroughs as well. Any more questions? No. Oh Andy. Thank you. It seems to be the key to the thing is getting on the list or not getting on the list. Could you just elaborate a bit more as who gets on the list and how? I understand the statutory ones people wanted for courts and out of warrants and all those things. What about suspicions of things? No. Unless you're circulated as wanted on the police national computer you wouldn't be on, sorry you I shouldn't use that word but the person would not be on there. If they are just reported as a potential suspect in a crime that's not high enough as a level of it would need to be actually circulated because unfortunately we do get allegations of crimes made obviously against people and people are named but we do have to investigate them in the first instance don't we? So rather than just assume that they should be arrested etc etc. So there's a threshold that has to be met and that threshold is that circulation on the police national computer. Thank you. Can we go on to the next presentation which is stronger and safer communities and it's Lee. And this is actually telling you what Wandsworth council is doing towards making the whole of Wandsworth safer and stronger. Thank you. Hi everyone I'm Lee Speer I'm the community safety team manager at the council. What that means is that I manage our 7 community safety officers across the borough. Each community safety officer covers 3 to 5 wards on average. What I'm going to talk through is what antisocial behaviour is first of all, some of the tools and powers available to deal with antisocial behaviour and then a case study of what we've done as a partnership in a particular area to respond to crime and ASB. So first of all what is antisocial behaviour? There's a couple of different elements to this. There's the standard definition that is conduct that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any person but then you have the housing aspects there as well. So you've got the nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to their residential premises and then you've got house related nuisance or annoyance to any person so that could be for example noise related antisocial behaviour. I'm just going to stop sharing and then come back in. Some of the categories of antisocial behaviour. So you've got antisocial behaviour can be quite subjective and it's broken into various different categories as well. So you've got acts directed at a person. I'm not going to go through each one but that can be intimidation, harassment etc. Then a disregard for community or personal wellbeing so that's noise, rowdy behaviour, unreasonable behaviour. Issues of public space so that could cover various things but it can be drug and substance misuse, alcohol related antisocial behaviour and some of those issues. Also extends to abandoned vehicles as well and then you've got the environmental aspect so that's vandalism such as graffiti, littering, fly tipping and those sort of offences. Sorry I'm having an absolute nightmare with this presentation, it's not skipping through. Yeah it's just, I'm going to go through it. So the tools and powers that are available to deal with antisocial behaviour. I'm really conscious of time so I'm not going to go into the ins and outs but when the antisocial behaviour, the first tools and powers to deal with it came in back in 2004, there were 19 different interventions. So it's a lot, it was quite muddled. When the 2014 act came in it streamlined that down. So there were six different legal interventions and on top of that there's two measures that are designed to give victims a say. So that's the ASB case review which was known as the community trigger before and what that means is that when a threshold is met, a victim of antisocial behaviour can request a full case review by an independent panel. There's also the community remedy. Sorry about this. Okay, so in terms of the tools and powers I've spoken about, it was streamlined down to six tools and powers. I'm not going to go through each one here but the reason I've put it here on the screen and it will be shared in the presentation pack is just to show really that antisocial behaviour isn't just the police's responsibility. These tools and powers can be used by housing providers. They can also be used by the local authority. We have a partnership working group in place at the moment and we're reviewing how we use these tools and powers across the partnership to make sure we're using them as effectively as we can. So in a minute I'm going to go into a specific example around a location and how as a partnership, so that brings in various different agencies, we actually respond and deal with crime and antisocial behaviour. First of all, I've just got on the screen here some of the method that we take when we're looking at what's required with problem solving. We have a triangle there for victim, location and offender and we break that down so we look at what the issues actually are, what we need to put in place to address those issues. Importantly, who will lead on them because as I said, that's not always the police. We look at what outcome we want to achieve and then we agree on multi-agency problem solving plan and that is where the community safety officers that I manage will come in. Their role, fundamentally, is to oversee and to coordinate the action plan. To ensure that the action plan delivers, we potentially set up a tasking group and then as that goes on, we oversee then the delivery of the plan, monitor and review actions. Thank you. The specific location I'm going to talk about is some of the work that we've been doing in Balham. That's our community safety officer who some of you may know, Victoria Boyle, has been working closely with agencies in Balham. This is an ongoing action plan so I'm aware there are still some issues but we're working through a plan and there's been a lot of measures put in place here. I'm just going to break down some of the issues that we were made aware of and then I'll talk through some of the approaches that were put in place across the partnership. The issues were burglary, particularly theft of bicycles, vehicle crime, both theft of and theft from motor vehicles, robbery, anti-social behaviour, rough sleeping and then the safety of women and girls. In terms of burglary, the key issue that we were made aware of was that there was a spike in residential burglaries and that was sheds generally being broken into and bikes quite often high value being stolen. Some of the response that was put in place was that the Met Police put in place an operation, specifically targeting burglaries. We purchased some shed alarms and we've started the process of rolling those out generally to repeat victims or vulnerable victims. There's been numerous partnership events but the one I put here was outside Sainsbury's in Balham. Neighbourhood Watch attended that as well to do some promotion and encourage sign up. We did bike marking and there's been some new crime prevention materials designed as well by my service. Again vehicle crime was raised, particularly keyless car thefts in the Balham Triangle area as well as theft from motor vehicle. Again there was another operation launched by the Met Police to target high profile offenders. In one case they identified and arrested and prosecuted an offender who was sentenced to seven years. A new leaflet was produced by the Community Safety Service for this operation and there were leaflet jobs as well as pop up events in hotspot areas. One of the other issues was robbery and this was a spike in school children robberies. The safer neighbour teams moved shift times to align with school finish times and there was a collaboration between services to understand the profile of victims of this crime, which schools they attended and children's services worked with the community safety team to do school talks in those schools that were identified. Again we did pop up events in hotspot locations. What we've tried to do is make them, as these issues are occurring, we're doing pop up events going into that location and speaking to local residents. Add to social behaviour, as I said at the beginning it is quite wide ranging, so just some of the interventions and measures that we've put in place here. The lighting for instance on the Balham Bridge hadn't been working for around 18 months. Victoria, the Community Safety Officer liaised with TFL to get that sorted, that's now working. The graffiti team at the council have responded to 28 separate incidents and removed graffiti in those locations. We worked with the local travel lodge because their car park was identified as hotspot, so we've worked with them and encouraged them to now install the gates of the car park because that was a hotspot. We launched ones with business against crime in Balham, that's still ongoing work but we're working with retailers there, particularly around shoplifting offences and the anti-social behaviour businesses experience. We've worked with British Transport Police in proactive operations that they've ran in Balham and there's been partnership attendance and engagement there. I spoke about the pop up events already and then we've held walk and talks in Balham because the safety of women and girls was an issue that was identified. Rough sleeping, I am aware that there are still hotspot locations in Balham, however we set up a separate task and finish group for this, particularly looking under Balham Bridge where there were multiple individuals who were not just rough sleeping and maybe not even necessarily rough sleeping but what they were doing was gathering lots of items, blocking the pavement and engaging in other anti-social behaviour. The approach there is a mix of engagement with some of the outreach teams but also enforcement where necessary. The next location that we're looking at is Balham Library and just some of the wider work that goes into this, the Community Safety Officer identified that the charity bins outside Sainsbury's were an issue because rough sleepers were taking items from there so we've engaged with the retailer and those bins have been removed. So there's lots more work going on in Balham but I just wanted to give really an idea of how wide anti-social behaviour is and to give an idea of the number of agencies that are involved in these plans as well. I said the seven Community Safety Officers on my team so we do have other plans similar to this. We're working on Roehampton, we've got an established plan in place in Tooting, Southside Shopping Centre and Falconbrook. They're the big plans that we have. There's also smaller bits and smaller issues that we deal with that don't necessarily require a whole plan. Apologies for the IT issues but hopefully that gives an oversight of some of the work that we do as a partnership. Thank you very much Lee, has anyone got any questions? Hi there, I'm Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Balham Ward and just wanted to say thank you Lee and team, amazing work. I am still slightly concerned about rough sleeping because it's been going on for a number of years and I'd be really grateful if the police could intervene on that. I'm particularly worried about the five men that are hanging around outside Balham Library, you mentioned Balham Library. It's very intimidating for people that live on Ramsden Road. They are also the same men I believe that were around the back of Sainsbury's about 18 months ago. This is really worrying for residents, I get so many emails on this and would really appreciate some support on that. I know the council is doing everything it can but police, really grateful because obviously the antisocial behaviour is linked to the rough sleeping so thank you. And also one more other point if that's alright and that's just to do with, we've had some feedback and some complaints from residents in Lake Wood Road concerning parcel theft and I'd be really grateful if the police could let us know and the council what they're doing to address that because obviously we have some pictures as well of these individuals. They've been roaming the streets for a while and they're still breaking the law and making residents feel unsafe in their own homes so thank you. Thank you very much for that, that's very helpful. I'll certainly take away the five males, five people under the Balham Library and speak with my team about that and make sure we have a look at that and also link in with Lee and Victoria in relation to that because I think there's that piece of partnership working is probably the most key thing there isn't it. Lake Wood Road I am aware of, that's certainly been an ongoing piece of work coming through this week actually. I think a big part of that and I know Mr Rajan has been engaging with the complaints in relation to that as well, I'll happily engage with you about that, about what we're going to do, certainly happy to do it afterwards if that's easiest and we'll have a proper conversation but I think we spoke before this as well around that. It's a piece of work we will do, parcel theft is quite a considerable issue across, well nationally if I'm honest, I don't think it's an isolated thing in Lake Wood Road. Evidentially we have to do a piece of work around that because I don't think the crime statistics we have reflect the issue so I think the first point of court feedback I would give is please can we encourage people to report and I would say that in every crime type everywhere. We can't always fix the issue then and there but the more we know, the more we can, the more effective we can be and the more effectively we can task to issues. I think in this particular issue quite a lot of it's been, let's put it this way, I ran the search today and I couldn't find a crime report for Lake Wood Road in relation to this issue which hamstrings us a little bit. Now I have had a conversation and we will go back to see if we can find it but also what I would say if you do engage with your constituents about it, please can you get them to feed in. If they have reported it, I don't want to miss things so if they can feed us in the number, we can find it and try and piece things together so please do encourage everyone to report it as much as they can and we would do it. I think there is also probably a crime prevention aspect to this as well in terms of lots of parcels unfortunately are left by delivery companies very visible to people passing on a road and that is an issue that could be improved. I would certainly encourage the use of lockers by delivery companies rather than having it left outside your premises as such but we will engage in that piece of crime prevention work as well because it's also part of our role and in actual fact we've got a meeting I think on Thursday with Victoria around the Lake Wood Road issue as well so we are doing a piece of work around it. Thank you very much and can I ask that you invite me to the Lake Wood Road meeting on Thursday as well, thank you. Just a couple of small issues. Can you hold on a moment. Superintendent is coming in. Thank you, Chair. Councillor, thank you for raising that. With Lake Wood, I've responded back to the individuals who have raised this for us and I know it's not just one or two, there are a number of residents and I know some of them are probably watching online so just rest assured that it is being looked at and we'll give it the highest priority and we'd want to work with yourselves, with the community safety team and there's lots of other measures we want to put in place so it's a long-term piece of work but in the short term it is being looked at. My only advice is I know some reports suggest that some of the residents have been intimidated and perhaps threatened, that's not acceptable so I would ask that in those instances please ring 999 and get that immediate threat dealt with but for the long term but please, please, please report because we've identified two individuals as potential suspects from the photos that have been submitted and so this call came in the number of emails Sunday evening by Monday 10 o'clock that had happened so it can move quickly but we do need witness statements and things like that to progress so rest assured we're looking into it. Thank you. With regard to the rough sleepers and especially around Tooting Broadway, there seems to be an awful lot of them gathering around Sainsbury's and opposite where the NHS talk office is in that road. Recently the office that was there for drug abuse and alcohol misuse has moved away, it's no longer in Tooting so a lot of those people have no access to support locally and I think that begging has increased and some have become quite aggressive with people walking by begging. With regard to noise I always thought my first port of call with noise was the council and that was that there was a noise nuisance department that would come out if the noise was happening particularly at weekends and say to notify them early enough for them to be able to come out so it's kind of working out who should you contact first, is it the police, is it the council and I know during COVID they were very scared to come out because of threats and other issues that were going on at the time and obviously for the disease but you know I'll be back to a normal base now in terms of how that kind of noise nuisance is being dealt with. Thank you. With the noise nuisance the first port of call is the Environmental Health Office so through the local authority they will link in with us if there's any sort of additional threat to them or they need our assistance. Just to give you an example, some work that was done with the community safety team at Wandsworth for Falconbrook during the summer we tend to sort of have loud music and speakers being placed out and about and the work with the community safety team ensured that we were able to serve notices prior to anything taking place on certain individuals that are identified which then minimised any inconvenience for the residents so where there's aspects we can take action we will do. Thank you very quickly. As we all know homelessness has increased quite substantially particularly since COVID but the council have actually set up a rough, sleepless team to engage with people who are rough sleeping to try to ensure they do actually have proper accommodation so this is ongoing work. Thank you. Thank you. You've had your hand up for quite a long while, thank you. Thank you. I'm Acting or Interim Chair for the Mine Elms Ward. I'm standing in for Liz Landers and things. I've got a few things. I welcomed Leigh's support on the community safety. Lots of good stuff going on there but by example, Nine Elms wasn't mentioned there at all. There's been a clear request for Archers 42 and Merchants Way hoarding to have some additional measures put in there for the last two and a half years. Obviously would welcome an update on that, please. There's been an increase in phone snatches and robberies to the person. We've got two great PCs on our patch, Connor Landenmoor and Izzy Ensby. I understand they put in a request for additional resources at least for a temporary basis. It'd be useful to understand whether that's been approved, please. Then I think the last thing on my list was the encampment or the protest by the US Embassy. We've got residents with families, with elderly and these protesters while everyone needs a right to protest. These can go on early in the mornings, all day, late at night for weeks on end. We understand it's been raised with environmental health, with the community safety team, with the police that it's been pushed up the ranks of the police and at one point in the senior leadership it was no further action. It's an understanding of what can be done to allow people to protest but at the same time people with young children or elderly trying to sleep. Have that peace and quiet at home, please. Thank you for raising those issues. I also cover Nine Elms and Connor and Izzy both work for me. In terms of the bid, that meeting was today and a bid has been approved so I can answer that one for you and we will work out exactly how we utilise those resources going forward. There is a resource coming your way I think is the positive news. In terms of the protesters, it is also something I'm aware of. I'm at a meeting on Thursday as well in relation to that with the council because I think it needs a joint approach. It's quite a tricky one because obviously as the police, we have to work within the law and the law doesn't always fit the criteria. We have considered application of various laws but at the moment, certainly from the information I've been given, what is going on doesn't fit a policing power to take further action but we work with the council to see what collaborative solution we can come up with. The hoarding is not an issue I'm aware of, I'm afraid, so I can't really answer that one. I don't know if that's a thing. She is, so yeah. Stacey Houghton is the Community Safety Officer for Nine Elms. If you give me your details afterwards, I'll ask Stacey to give you a call. I can't remember the ins and outs of Arch 42 but I know that Stace has been dealing with it. Pass me your details and I'll ask Stace to call you. Hi, thank you. I'm Fiona and I'm Vice Chair of the SNT for Ballum. When we judge three and we vote on three priorities in our ward, we clearly are voting for the most serious offences. However, and you've already mentioned it today, that I also represent my residence in Lakewood Road and it actually was one of the images that you put up on the screen about the Community Safety Officers and the SNT police that came locally, so thank you. What I'm asking is there is a huge amount of local crime in our road parcel theft and I would challenge that we spoke earlier on that there were only eight parcel thefts in 18 months reported and I can guarantee there's an awful lot more from my road. It's very difficult to get residents to report because you are faced with knife crimes and 15 year olds that are being attacked in the park for their mobile phones and a parcel, it doesn't seem important but the parcel thefts, and we have shared photos with you, are becoming so aggressive in our road. They own the road, they walk up like a swanky sort of walk and they now, mums and ladies, we can't go outside when we know. We have a strong WhatsApp group and we know when they're in the road. I've also shared this and I take the notes at the SNT. I've been sharing this for over two years but obviously this lower level crime is, you don't have the ability to solve it. So I'm also asking that but also to the council is we're starting to look at our own options, what can we do and what can we ask the council for and if you can identify, like if you just came once, that these people come once or twice a day, can you introduce… Sorry, can I ask you to hurry up please because we normally finish at 8 o'clock, thank you. If you can introduce a public spaces protection order for these individuals and just get them out of our road because it's not safe. Thank you. I'm Tom Glockner, Ploughs State on Lower Richmond Road. We rely heavily on the Safer Nanny Neighbourhood, Thamesfield Police to help us out and abstractions seem to be increasing at a higher and higher level and I know there's some measures being undertaken to grab other personnel from different divisions, desk jobs and so forth but it just really hinders their ability to successfully present a deterrent to the neighbourhood when they're constantly being abstracted and we have none of them patrolling the area. So it's just a huge issue that really needs to be addressed. That's very kind, thank you for raising that. For those that don't know me, I'm quite a chance to speak this evening. I'm Inspector Steve Burke, I cover the Putney Cluster which obviously includes Thamesfield Ward. Just in relation specifically to Thamesfield Ward, just in the last two weeks we've got a new sergeant who's filled that position. Our two PCs that are assigned to your ward are both fully operational and they're out there doing it. Just some good news I guess from Thamesfield, obviously the main focus really is around the high street. There's been a lot of issues in relation to retail theft, antisocial behaviour, both alcohol related, homelessness, public urination and also some youth related ASB. So there's a lot of work going on in and around the high street. As I say, our offices are fully operational. The PCSO that you've got, Alex, is absolutely fantastic as you're possibly aware, she's actually pregnant at the moment. But we've got some really, really good work going on. In terms of patrols, as I say, whilst the focus is very much of the high street, we've got some new resources in terms of, we've got some new pedal cycles, we've got cycle trained officers and our focus is very much on patrolling those areas that have traditionally had problems, such as along the embankment. Our theft from motor vehicles have reduced around enterprise way down the other end of the ward. We've worked on an eviction of a family of concern. As a result of all of that work, there is some really, really good work going on with Thamesfield. But if you've got any specific issues, I'll speak to you afterwards and we'll work towards those. Just to echo that all three officers are very good, PC Alex, PC Rachel, PC Alicia are fantastic. I just want them to continue to get work. That's very kind of you to say. Thank you. Lee and that would be the last one because we've got, we're running out of time. Thank you. Hi there. Good evening. My name's Alex. I'm just acting on behalf of Wonder War tonight. I've heard a few frustrations mentioned already, which I'm sort of very much feeling at the moment, probably starting with the motor vehicle theft we've experienced. Both incidents were reported. My road's Vanderbilt Road. You may be familiar with that just off Garrett Lane. There was a very aggressive theft in February, and then it was actually my own moped that was pinched or attempted to be stolen in April. The characters involved were very brazen. They were sitting in front of cameras for 10... Can we hold on a moment there, Alex? You've sent in some questions for the... You've mentioned that same road. Are you speaking about that now? Because that's not... We haven't reached that part of the agenda. Right. Okay. When's appropriate to mention the various issues? Next item. Well, sorry. We've finished taking yours, but then we won't do it when we get to the questions for the commander, the inspector. Sorry. Sure. Would you like me to continue? Yes, please. Yeah. Really, those two issues were pretty shocking. We had people standing outside people's houses with angle grinders for 10 minutes feeling very comfortable, if I'm totally honest. Their new neighbors were watching. Their new cameras were on them. They did not care. Obviously, they're masked up. You're familiar with this. They wear dark helmets. All you can see is their eyes coming through, but really the frustration was how it was dealt with. I just got told, Oh, they were hooded up. Probably nothing will happen. It's frustrating to hear that as a resident, because you're saying, Report the crime, which obviously you do, and you need the stats, and I totally get that. I'm not expecting miracles, but I think the problem is we just don't feel a presence at the moment. There's a real sort of... How do you call it? The morale is quite low, because we just feel that unless you're getting called out for a knife or a gun, then it is low priority. I get you guys have huge issues on your shoulders at the moment, but it's just quite worrying. Quite a lot of the time, don't feel safe. Then mixed in with that, we get people belting down our road really fast. We've raised it with a cancel, but they don't feel the stats warrant bumps, and they don't feel the stats warrant having a one-way street. The amount of road wage we've witnessed is ludicrous. We had a standoff a couple of weeks ago for an hour. Just a really ridiculous situation where two people wouldn't back up. It's just a bit worrying. The mood is quite aggressive out there. London's a great city, but we're just screaming for a bit more presence from you guys where possible. I appreciate resources are hopefully coming back with maybe a new government. Who knows? It's pretty frustrating out there for us as residents. Thank you for that. I think from our point of view, we are keen for our officers to be out there as much as possible. I think we are just as frustrated when they're taken off for various other things, unfortunately. I know a piece of work is going on to try and minimise that. Hopefully you will see them more. I can't make too many promises, but we all work very hard to make sure officers are out there as much as possible and as visible as possible in your areas. Thanks for raising that. I've answered that in the questions, but just to add a bit more detail, with the speeding and things, we'll share that with our transport traffic colleagues. They love catching people speeding, so we'll look to put some operation down there in relation to that. With the theft element, we'll look into that to see what images were shared with us to see if we can use any new technologies that we've got to try and identify and see if that investigation has got any other avenues that we can use to pursue. But motor vehicle crime is taken seriously and we'll do everything to try and deal with that. I'll get James to come back to you on that. Thank you very much, Alex. There are a number of questions you've asked that you wanted to table as well tonight. Most of them are local authority issues and we're going to get them to respond to you after. Now, for the rest of the meeting, normally we finish at eight o'clock and we've run over quite a lot. I would like us to just do the questions for the superintendent and the two verbal updates from Leigh, which is on the early prisoner release and the Safer Neighbourhood Project funding update. It's only the War Panel chairs if you'd like to take that for information. Do you mind just going on for another 10, 15 minutes at the maximum? Okay, thank you. Thanks a lot. We can read Jo's question, if she's online. Do you want me to read it? No, you can read it. We need to get on. Thank you. Jo Prosser is online, she submitted a question, but I don't believe her volume's working so I'll read the question. From the last open meeting in my ward, there's been a great deal of concern over the lack of police presence in the area both day and night. In particular, is the area around Vanderbilt Road with ongoing road rage, speeding, car theft and moped thefts intimidation to name but a few of the issues experienced? I think Jo would just like a response on that from the police. I think it's the same issue that Alex has just raised, so we can pass that one. Thank you. Yes, I will speak to Alex afterwards. Thank you. We also had a question submitted from Mr Batt, who's unfortunately not able to attend this evening. Mr Batt asked, are there any plans for additional officers to walk in the streets and talk to residents? They need more resources, encouragement and additional funding. They are doing a good job in difficult times. That sounds more like a comment than a question, but I appreciate the sentiment and we do our absolute best to engage with whoever we speak. That is literally our job, is to speak to people and if you see officers chatting to each other and not to you, please just say, can we have a chat? Yeah, thank you. Can I just say, when I saw this question, I just did one ward, Wandle. There are 48 streets in that ward. Definitely, we can't have the officers walking in all those streets. That's just one ward. When I saw the question, I thought, let me just look at a ward and take the number of streets in it. Yes, we would like more officers in the streets, but it's impossible to get people to walk around all those streets. Leona, you were asking a question. Thank you. Actually, I didn't introduce myself at the beginning. My name is Leona Cooper and I'm the London Assembly Member for Merton and Wandsworth. I got involved in the Lakewood Road ASB issue and I would like to thank the police and also Councillor Henderson for their swift responses because there was a lot of emails backwards and forwards over a weekend. So that was very welcome. But I did just want to raise, we were talking about antisocial behaviour. One thing that comes up all the time is the issue of fly tipping and it was raised with me just on Saturday morning by some very angry residents in East Putney Ward. I'm not sure if any of them are here this evening. I know that the council has been trying very hard to press that and is putting cameras actually in this area because it's particularly right, but it continues to be a problem and I just wondered if there is anything that we can do because it's clearly criminal, the council has responsibilities, but, you know, the sort of multi-agency approach. The other thing I just wanted to say, and it doesn't relate to this at all, but Niall Barrett, who's the Chair of the First Down Safe Neighbourhood team, has sent me a message to say that he's really sorry. He's got held up and is unable to be with us, but he wondered if not only could I pass on his apologies, but also could we also pass our condolences from this meeting. We've just had a new sergeant, Police Sergeant Paul Joyce, who joined the Safe Neighbourhood team, has just passed away, just having joined it, and he wondered if the meeting could join and we could all pass on condolences to his friends and family. I'm sure everyone, you know, will wish to do that, but that's not relevant, obviously, to my other comments. Thank you. Thank you. Our condolences and sympathies go through to him and his family and to his colleagues. Yeah, we had a question asked about PSPOs, and Fiona's asked about this, but the PSPO legislation is not a police. It's the community safety team. So, I think I can cover off both of those questions. So, first of all, the fly tipping. It's not my team that deal with that, but if there's particular locations, send it through to me and I will get in touch with the manager who deals with the fly tipping aspect and ask them to have a conversation with you. But what I would say is just to residents to keep reporting it with as many details as you possibly can. Yeah, and if there's specific locations, I can ask the manager to make contact. Thank you. One thing that does get raised is when there's a new site is being developed, if I can put it in that weird way, can a camera go up is one of the things that comes up. In East Partney, they have got cameras. Lots of other locations they haven't. Clearly, you can't have them everywhere. Are there mobile cameras that can be moved around to help control it, because I think cameras do make people somewhat more reluctant. I don't think it stops it, but it increases reluctance at least. So there certainly are mobile cameras. The request for those cameras will come in from different teams. So, it might be that my team are working with the police and we're requesting them in an area where there's, for instance, there might be robberies and we're looking at them there. You might get ones with housing, need them in some of their housing estates where there's issues. So it's just balancing the community needs with the risk and managing those cameras. But certainly, they do go in fly-tipping locations and hotspots, and the fly-tipping team are on top of that. But it's on a case-by-case basis, unfortunately. And with the PSPO, just to cover that quickly, so the issues that we've spoken about in that particular area are criminal offenses in themselves. It's not something that the PSPO legislation was designed for. That's more around behaviors such as, so we've got a borough-wide public space protection order in Wandsworth for alcohol-related antisocial behavior, which is something that existing legislation doesn't cover. So that's what the public space protection order is designed for. But as we've done in other areas, we will work with the police and other agencies to try and problem-solve that. It's just the PSPO isn't the legislation to use for that particular issue. Thank you. I've got a couple of very, very brief questions. Can the police team give us an update on ward recruitment and how local teams are getting on with that? And can the police tell us how they're finding the council's recent upgrades and investment in CCTV and whether or not the partnership has been beneficial? Cheers. Thank you, Councillor. So I carry eight vacancies at the moment. That was as high as 15, but posts have been filled, so I'm waiting for officers to arrive from training school in relation to that. And they arrive on the 16th of December, so eight vacancies. But hopefully within the next few months, as other people shift around the MPS, I'm looking to get more people from there. CCTV has been a huge success for us. The investment in it has paid many, many times over. They've assisted in saving lives so many times from people who've been threatening suicide, catching suspects for incidents, robberies and such like. So there's a long list, and Chris Cullen has got a long list, so my thanks goes to the Council for investing in that. We have an officer who sits within that team, but I think collaboratively it's been a huge success for the borough. Thank you. Could we move on to Lee, your two verbal updates on early prisoner release and the project funding? Thank you. Okay. After my IT issues, you'll be pleased to hear I'm not going to try and get it on the screen. It's just a verbal update. The prisoner release scheme, I'm unfortunately not going to be able to go into the detail that people might want to hear. It's not in the public domain around the numbers that have been released, and I can't go into details obviously about particular individuals. But what I can say is, so for anyone who doesn't know or you've probably read about it or seen it online, so early release scheme designed to free up prison spaces, so it means that people that are eligible will serve 40 percent of their sentence as opposed to the 50 percent that it would have been originally. Obviously that means that probation service and prisons will have a shorter time period to carry out pre-release planning. The first phase of people that were eligible to be released was on the 10th of September, and the second one will be on the 22nd of October. Before all of this happened, there was a task and finish group set up by public health within the council. That was internal, although obviously there's been ongoing conversations with our partners within the police, and that was set up to try and mitigate the impacts and to coordinate the council's approach and determine how best we could support other partners. Probation service are leading on the risk management and safeguarding checks of people that are being released. Although I said I can't go into the numbers, what I would say is that the numbers are very, very low, and there is a lot of planning that has gone into those individuals that are released. I'm really sorry I can't get into the specifics of it, but that's the update there. In terms of the project updates, I'm going to rattle through these quite quickly, but if anyone wants any information on any of the projects, then feel free to drop me an email and I'm happy to have a chat. I thought it would be useful for everyone to know the projects that we have funded, so each year the Safe Neighbourhood Board get a pot of money from MOPAC to allocate towards community projects that fit the MOPAC priorities. This year, allocated to projects we had around £18,000. The projects that we've assigned money to were Wandsworth Neighbourhood Watch, which was £4,000, and Children's Services in Evolve are going to be doing a film project around exploitation, working with young people, so there's around £1,700 allocated to that. There's a WalkSafe app, which Kiera Evans on my team, who's the four Community Safety Officer, is leading on. What that will do is, well, it's an app that can map out locations that are relevant to violence against women and girls, so it might be safe spaces, et cetera. First Down Youth Cafe, so this has been running now for a couple of years. £3,500 has gone towards that. It was set up initially in response to robbery and anti-social behaviour around First Down that was impacting mostly on young people that attend Graveney School. The Youth Cafe gives them a safe space that they can go into. There's a range of activities there. That's on a Wednesday. Crimes Against the Elderly, so this is particularly in relation to scams and fraud type offences we've allocated £1,500 to. That goes towards crime prevention materials, but also a series of talks where we go out into the community. Battersea Park Action Plan, so there's money allocated towards that, and that's particularly around robbery, violence against women and girls, and anti-social behaviour. Bike Marking and Doctor Bike Sessions, so that's to go across the whole borough, and there's just over £1,300 allocated towards that. I spoke about the shed burglaries earlier, so the bike marking kits were always good to have. Those projects we had, the MOPAC funding come in around two weeks ago. I've got most of that funding out. I think there's one or two where I'm just waiting to get the money out to the relevant projects, but many of these projects are already under way, and the ones that aren't, I'm working with the project leads. Thank you, Lee, and should we make a request for the next financial year, because the turnaround is rather quick? It is, thanks, Marlene. Yes, the turnaround is really quick. To be honest, if anyone thinks of any projects now, and I'm quite happy to send around the criteria, I'm quite happy to start collating those. Now is absolutely fine for us to start collating ideas, because typically we get to the end of March, MOPAC say that they want the projects in the next two weeks, and then we're trying to get these ideas so if we can work together and get them in advance, obviously that's far better. I will get the criteria circulated. I'm happy to have a conversation with anybody if anyone has any questions. Thank you. Anyone has any questions for Lee on those two items? Thank you. It's now 11 minutes past 8, and we normally finish at 8 o'clock, and I'm sure you quite enjoyed the information on what the council is doing as well as on the live facial recognition. I'd like to thank you very much and apologize that we've had to go over, but it was a very intense meeting this evening. We didn't have anything from the stop and search reports that we could have shared with you, neither on the custody, but I understand from John that the independent custody staff has been increased from four to nine, so we should get something in the next month. The board panel chairs, the notes from both the June meeting, which we couldn't circulate because the meeting was canceled because of the elections, so it's there for you to read. Can I just ask if there's any other business at the moment? Go ahead, Trevor. Just a plea, really. This meeting was advertised very late as being the public meeting for the year. There's only the one a year, and it was impossible, really, to get out and reach everybody to say, Can you come at such short notice? It's a public meeting. You've made the agenda very, very full without much time to cover half of it, probably, if it had all been in, so I'm just saying, can we please think in future, whenever the next year's meeting is going to be the public one, that we advertise it to the public and get some of the public here, rather than people that are here and mainly active already. Thank you. We tried to get it in the comms team a bit earlier, but it was a bit delayed, and I apologize for that. Before everyone leaves, can I ... Sorry, Jan. Just a quick point on the annual public meeting. I wonder whether the earlier meeting in summer might be easier for people to get out, particularly people who are concerned about coming out after dark to a public meeting. We can look at that. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much for coming. Once again, I apologize that we've run over. It's now 13 minutes past eight. Could I just ask you to ensure that you've signed in on the attendance sheets, those who are here. If you haven't signed in, could you please sign in. Once again, thank you ever so much for being here, and I hope you found the meeting useful. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]