Safer Croydon Newsletter

Welcome to the Safer Croydon e-newsletter, a monthly update for the community on key safety issues from the Croyon Police and croydon council. Please click here to forward to anyone who you think would like to receive it.Your feedback is really important to us and we would like to hear from you as to whether this is something you would like to continue receiving, whether you know other groups who would be interested in receiving it, and what kind of information you would like it to contain.

Croydon police, council and local businesses are joining forces to keep the town centre clean, safe and welcoming throughout the festive season as Operation Safe for All continues.

Until the New Year, up to 20 extra police officers will be out on the streets in the town centre on Friday and Saturday nights. During the day, the town centre police team will provide a high visibility reassuring presence, supported by uniformed council officers and the council’s mobile CCTV unit.

Patrols will take place during peak times at transport hubs and other hotspots, and police will use a range of enforcement powers including stop and search, to keep would be-troublemakers out.

Police and council officers will work together to target known offenders and prevent them entering the borough, including sharing intelligence through the Business Crime Reduction Partnership website. The website, run by Croydon Business Improvement District (BID) allows the police, council and local businesses to share information, including mugshot galleries of the top ten offenders. Since its introduction this year, the website has proved invaluable in keeping trouble makers out, resulting in a 24 per cent reduction in shoplifting in one shopping centre.

In the evenings there will be an increased police presence around licensed venues, including officers with search arches. Anyone acting criminally or antisocially, day or night, will be removed from the town centre by police officers using the range of enforcement powers at their disposal, including dispersals.

Meanwhile, council teams will be out working to keep the streets clean and free from litter, with the main thoroughfares in Croydon cleaned up to five or six times a day. Neighbourhood enforcement officers will hand out fixed penalty notices to anyone dropping litter on the streets, as part of the ongoing drive to keep the town centre tidy.

Croydon Police are continuing to tackle burglary on the borough as part of Operation Bumblebee. Two days of action took place in November, which resulted in 19 people being arrested, and 15 vehicles were seized.

However, the problem of insecure homes persists. Only last week, five burglaries in Kenley happened, where the burglars just opened patio doors that were left unlocked. Police are urging all residents to ensure that doors and windows are kept locked to stop these burglaries from happening.

The other thing residents can do to help is report any suspicious activity or people to our burglary squad. If you can see someone acting suspiciously, call 999, but if you want to report something that may have already happened, then you can call the burglary squad in confidence on 07799 583232, or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Croydon residents will benefit from pioneering plans to bring police and council officers together as a single unified crime and grime busting force, working to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour in their local area.

Croydon is thought to be the first London borough to adopt such a model, which will vastly improve both agencies’ abilities to respond effectively to residents’ crime, safety and environental concerns, using all the powers at their disposal.

The proposal, unveiled at this month’s council meeting, brings together police officers from Safer Neighbourhood teams, and uniformed council officers working in parks, on streets and in housing estates, as one integrated service.

A new head of service would report jointly to the council and the Metropolitan Police through Director and Superintendent levels.

• A man has been found guilty of several counts of sexual offences and rape. Michael Dunne will be sentenced in February 2010 at Croydon Crown Court.
• Appeals continue to help detectives in the case of murder victim Ricardo Cox.Read more...
• A man has been charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition without a license following a raid on an address in Harrington Road by the Woodside Safer Neighbourhoods Team.
• Operation Minstead - Delroy Grant has been arrested and charged with a total of 22 offences in connection with the Operation Minstead investigation. Read more...