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Chief Superintendent Robbins is an affable man. Meeting him in his office at  Shoreditch Police Station, it's difficult to imagine that in any hard cop/soft
cop interrogation he would be the officer tearing off the suspect's ears. He became
Borough Commander three years ago after a stint as Chief Superintendent at Stoke
Newington. When he arrived at that station in 1995, it was in the aftermath of the
corruption scandals. He said that many of the 370 officers were 'shell-shocked' after
their battering from the media and that he took action to transfer many of them away from
the area. The modern glass-fronted station in Stoke Newington High Street was designed to
allow visibility into the interior to give a feeling of accessibility. There are a couple
of problems, however. The visibility means that people outside can see who is inside
reporting a crime or (perhaps) grassing up a mate and that in summer the place is
extremely hot.
Almost as soon as we start talking, he offers a startling fact. Street crime has risen in
Hackney by 40 per cent since the last official audit figures were published a year ago.
This is mainly due to the sharp increase in the theft of mobile phones. He points out that
unlike well-publicised cases, some involving guns or knives, many are simple snatch
offences. Office workers going home tend to pull out their mobiles in the street and are
easy targets for a robber who can sprint away without being identified. Identification is
a big problem. If victims cannot, or are reluctant to, point the finger at the
perpetrator, it vastly reduces the chances of an arrest. Hence the relatively low clear up
rates for street crime. Hackney has a clear up rate of 12.5 per cent for street robbery,
slightly better than the average for London. Lambeth is the worst at 5.6 per cent.
The question of identification brought us to the difficult question of ethnicity and
crime. Recent headline publicity indicated that young black men carry out over 70 per cent
of street thefts ('jacking') of mobiles. Peter Robbins is guarded. He says that while most
reported suspects for street crime are black, and in disproportionately high numbers to
the number of black people in the borough, the truth is that some black
people commit a lot of crime as do some white people. For instance, young white men, who
often have a drug habit, carry out most burglaries. The overall number of thieves is low,
regardless of ethnic origin. He demolishes the myth that it is mainly old people who are
robbed. Most robberies take place on the street and most victims are men below the age of
thirty.
The Chief Superintendent points to Stoke Newington communities that have internal systems
of dealing with crime. The Orthodox Jewish community of Stamford Hill will delegate
responsibility to individuals to support any member who is imprisoned or in trouble with
the police. They also have specialists in police procedures that will represent them in
any complaint to the police.
Peter Robbins says that the Turkish and Kurdish communities tend not to report crimes to
the police. He attributes this to the fact that many have left-wing politics and a
tradition of not dealing with authority if it can be avoided. He also says that Stoke
Newington police need to have some knowledge of the background of the various
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Lunch noon -
2.30pm Monday to
Saturday
4 crowns
Guesthouse
Ensuite |
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