In continuation of the previous post we would like to welcome our new Safer Neighbourhoods Sergeant Martin Wild to the team! We look forward to working with him and seeing lots of him around St Leonards ward. He should know his way around as he was the Streatham homebeat officer here in the 1990's for quite a while. Indeed, his first foray across Streatham Green was apparently met with surprise by individuals known then to Sgt Wild (and to the police!) with something of an exclamation (by the individual, not the Sgt) of "you can run but you can't hide" or similar!
Sgt Wild will be re-acquainting himself with the area and will be reporting to us at our next meeting.
We understand we will also be receiving an additional two PCSOs from the 22 funded by Lambeth Council from funds from the street wardens programme. Unlike the street wardens, the new PCSOs are somewhat constrained insofar as they are tasked primarily with patrolling the High Road and focusing on preventing street crime. They fall under the command of the St Leonards team thus all is not lost in that other members of the team will then have more time to patrol side streets.
We also want to extend a warm welcome to Pavel and Conrad, two Polish police officers on secondment to the Met, who have been working with our team to help establish good relations with the local Polish community and create ties with the Polish Police force to exchange information about organised crime figures within both communities.
Rosalie Lawlor and I were pleased to be able to meet our new borough commander for Lambeth, Sharon Rowe, who will be coming here from Enfield. A big welcome to Lambeth to her and we wish her great success in her new role!
On a final note, our Safer Neighbourhoods Inspector for the area, Richard Hall, will be leaving us in September to become Operations commander for leafy Sutton borough nearer to where he lives. We wish him all the best and good success in taking up his new post. We will keep you posted on who his replacement will be as soon as we have information.
