‘All propaganda and no substance!’
Neighbourhood policing strategy disguises cutbacks to Leys force
The Leys Independent has learned that there have been major cutbacks to the team of officers operating on Blackbird Leys. The move has come in the face of a major New Labour propaganda offensive on ‘Neighbourhood Policing’.
It is understood that all the police officers in the Blackbird Leys beat team—a six-strong group that was supposed to prioritise issues on the estate—have been re-assigned to work across the whole of the city, leaving them with no time to attend to day-to-day matters on the Leys.
While these changes aren’t permanent, there is no indication of when, if ever, the beat officers will be able to go back to focusing their efforts on Blackbird Leys.
At the same time the number of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) based on Blackbird Leys has been reduced, with two out of four being sent to Rose Hill and Littlemore as Neighbourhood Policing is implemented across Oxford.
The PCSOs are instructed to avoid confrontation with criminal and antisocial elements, which means their main role is to contact the police if they observe an incident. However, with police resources stretched across the city, a timely response is unlikely anyway.
The Blackbird Leys Neighbourhood Action Team was billed by Labour as ‘a new way of policing the estate’ in which ‘the public decide what issues are the most important to them and the police respond.’
IWCA councillor Lee Cole commented, ‘In reality the public are very wary of yet another gimmick and only a miniscule number are actually participating in this scheme. And who can blame them since it turns out that the police have allocated hardly any resources to respond anyway.
‘Numerous residents have complained to us that the police take hours or even days to respond to what are often quite serious incidents—that is if they respond at all.’
‘Like other initiatives thought up by New Labour the Neighbourhood Policing strategy is all propaganda and no substance.’
The last issue of the Leys Independent reported that at recent meetings of the Neighbourhood Action Team only one actual resident was present, out of a host of council officers, police and other appointees.
Leys Independent, issue 34, October 2006
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