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Annual Report 2009/0 Annual Report 2009/0 Community-Police Consultative Group for Lambeth Annual Report 2009/0 Annual Report 2009/0 Contents Page Chair’s Report............................................................................................................................... 2 Honorary Comptroller’s Report...................................................................................................... 6 View from a Safer Neigbourhood ................................................................................................ 24 Chair of Independent Custody Visitors Report............................................................................ 25 Appendix: Membership................................................................................................................ 30 www.lambethcpcg.org.uk 1 Annual Report 2009/0 Chair’s Report 2009/2010 seems a very long time ago. So much has happened since July the end of CPCG’s operating year, it is difficult to believe that 2009/10 was an effective and important year in the development of Lambeth CPCG. When I became chairperson in 2006 we were in continuing difficulty with our funding agency, the MPA. Our meetings were renowned not for their effectiveness but for the unpleasantness and insularity of our public debates and for an all-pervading misogyny that coloured our deliberations. If that seems unduly harsh I can tell you that it took the best part of a year to persuade the MPA lift recurrent restrictions on our funding. By the beginning of 2009 we were generally regarded as an example to others in effectiveness and value for money: Best Practice A comparison with Lambeth Borough and its CPEG highlighted that Lambeth has a far more strategically focussed meeting with a greater input from a more diverse group of people and organisations. Also, Pan-London MPS teams are regular attendees – the Territorial Support Group (TSG) and Firearms OCU (CO19) attend their meetings and give regular updates to the public on their operations held in their borough. Source: MPS Westminster By 2009 we were awarded the maximum MPA funding for CEGs, having not only improved the shape and content of our monthly public meetings but also successfully pitched our Indian tent at Lambeth Country Show, actively participated in the borough’s Expos and Peace Week and produced a regular newsletter and website. More importantly, the local debate we had started with our report on the interaction between the mentally ill and the police was brought to prominence once more following the tragic death in custody of Sean Rigg. Thanks to George Marshman, Assistant Director of Adult Services Head of Community Safety, money was found in 2009 to prioritise this issue and recommendations will shortly be presented to our CPCG whose implementation will result in a major change to the way in which people who may be 2 www.lambethcpcg.org.uk Annual Report 2009/0 mentally disordered are cared for whilst in police custody. There is no doubt that this Lambeth pilot will have impact across greater London and beyond. Lambeth CPCG along with Lambeth’s Independent Custody Visitors remains focused on the rights of vulnerable people who are the subject of police action or are in police custody or prison. In Lambeth the dis-proportionality of young black men to others who are detained in youth offending institutions or prison continues to rise, as does the number of black men who are Sectioned to be detained under the Mental Health Act. The death of Sean Rigg in August 2008 remains unaccounted for and the criticism of the Independent Police Complaints Commission whose full report must await the Inquest, was forcibly expressed to it’s chairman, Nick Hardwick, at a special CPCG meeting in May of 2009. The relatives of those who have died whilst in contact with the police gathered again in August this year. These included the relatives of Blair Peach, Brian Douglas and Ricky Bishop as well as those of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson. This moving event was organised by Merci and Samantha Rigg and held at the Karibu Centre. Sean Riggs family must wait until 2012 for an Inquest. We learn now that the Coalition Government has decided to ditch the appointment of a Chief Coroner whose main task was to sort out and improve the poor Inquest system with its huge delays. Also, in 2009, we commissioned Catriona Robertson to research and report into how well or otherwise local people are engaged with the community safety process. Her report ‘Whose Shout’, published early in 2010 has been widely welcomed and its recommendations will be considered at a conference we will be organising later this year. The recommendations are challenging for our CPCG as they are for the Partnership but we have long recognised that we need to be far more innovative, imaginative and inclusive in achieving our objectives. One way in which we have tried to be more innovative has been to develop a plan to introduce mediation into the way in which we can support those who feel aggrieved www.lambethcpcg.org.uk 3 Annual Report 2009/0 towards the police. Together with our colleagues in Lambeth Mediation Service we presented our local police and the IPCC with a costed plan to pilot this service. Whilst the IPCC and the Police Federation showed support for this idea, as did the past and present Borough Commander, we have not entirely satisfied the MPS’s legal advisers. Although by the beginning of 2010 we were close to agreement, the means to finance the pilot is now problematic. Nevertheless, we remain committed to offer mediation where appropriate on a professional if voluntary basis. Throughout 2009/10 we continued to play our part in the Safer Lambeth Partnership and on the pan-London forums of Stop and Search and London Communities Police Partnership (an umbrella body for London wide CPCGs), where Jim Toohill is now a Board member. Our Board Members have been active at all levels of community life here in Lambeth as well as attending events and meetings that arise on a weekly basis about issues of crime and disorder, whether acting as independent police observers or advising at Gold Groups following serious incidents or holding private meetings for tenants and residents in ‘hot spot’ areas of the borough. Many of our Members are active in their local Safer Neighbourhood Panels and it is clear that our working relationship with the SNPs has grown and improved throughout the year. In thanking the Board and Jim Toohill our Honorary Comptroller in particular, I could not end without a big thank you to Ben McKendrick who left us at the beginning of 2010 to fulfil his long-held ambition to travel the world. We miss him and wish him well. Thank you to our Borough Commander Nick Ephgrave, who in my view is proving himself to be the most caring and also the most accessible of borough commanders and to his senior team of officers, uniformed and CID. Also, to the civilian staff of our local police service who have done sterling work here and who now face the bulk of the cuts throughout the MPS as do our colleagues within our local Council, many of whom have already received notice of redundancy. How the services to our most vulnerable people, the very young and the elderly, are affected will need to be a priority on our CPCG agenda in this coming year. 4 www.lambethcpcg.org.uk Annual Report 2009/0 The optimism of 2009/10 seems a long way off indeed, but after more than twenty five years of existence, Lambeth CPCG will, I am sure, remain at the hub of our community life, however hard that gets. On a personal level, I have found being Chairperson of Lambeth CPCG often frustrating, sometimes infuriating but always stimulating and I do believe it to be an honour. I am now looking forward to returning to my place as a voice from the back of the hall! Anna Tapsell In Memoriam It is sad to record the deaths during the year of three stalwart members of CPCG – Greta Brookes, Wally Channon and Abdul Sultan Virani. All three were individuals who not only contributed hugely to the borough in their youth and vigour but maintained a close interest even into their frailty. They were all three sources of hard-earned wisdom and good friends to us all. We miss them. www.lambethcpcg.org.uk 5 Annual Report 2009/0 Honorary Comptroller’s Report CPCG has sustained its service to all those who live, work or study in Lambeth, providing them with access to key decision makers in the statutory agencies charged with making Lambeth a safer and fairer borough. CPCG has an open membership, to individuals and to community organisations, but its service goes wider. This emphasis on breadth of access is reflected in all our activities in the year – our monthly public meetings, our website and our outreach activities. Our commitment to broaden that access, including to newer and sometimes more marginalised communities within the borough, was evidenced in the year by our commissioning the Whose Shout? research project, funded by the Safer Lambeth Partnership (our local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership). Website The numbers of ‘unique visitors’ to our website continues to grow and this tool provides us with a platform from which to reach many people in the borough who have not the time or inclination to attend events. UNIQUE VISITS TO CPCG WEBSITE EACH MONTH 7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 - 5 5 6 7 8 9 6 8 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 - - - - - - - - - - - t l r r v y n g n b p c u p a a o u a e u e J O A J J N F M A S M A ‘Unique Visit’ is one where the visitor loads more than one page 6 www.lambethcpcg.org.uk Annual Report 2009/0 The Whose Shout? report, in particular, has given us clear indications of how we can develop this means of communication and information giving whilst demonstrating that for some groups (eg veiled Muslim women) the Internet is a preferred method for having their ‘Shout’.
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