Town Centre Unit Report, Mar.09

We asked our Town Centre Unit Inspector, Simon Ellingham, for news and prayer requests and also whether he would like to comment on recent newspaper claims that Croydon is the ‘knife capital of London..’

The Town Centre continues to be a challenging environment. We have weeks of very little of what we would call unusual activity, then we get a flurry of it and the headlines scream out as usual.

I find it very difficult to reply to the 'knife capital of London' comment. I have no figures to compare and contrast, but we certainly are not finding lots of knives on the people we stop. I would simply refer to the published figures we state that across the whole of Croydon we have actually reduced knife offending by 14% on last years figure, which is a significant achievement considering we were showing an increase in September.
Within the Town Centre itself we have had 17 knife related offences since the turn of the year, and that includes two bad weeks in succession when we had 9 in January.

Overall, we are seeing an increase in groups of young people, mainly school affiliated, gathering from 4pm onwards towards the end of the week, and occasionally we have sporadic acts of idiocy from them. We have certainly stamped down on the 'Gang' activity of previous years, but these school gatherings do cause us concern. In March 2008 we saw a large increase in this sort of activity, mainly related to the improving weather bringing the miscreants out of hibernation, and one would expect a similar pattern this year.

Criminal activity is a far better picture. Speaking to Store detectives we are keeping a lid on theft from shops, and most stores report to me that things are at a very low and acceptable level. Late night economy has moments of interest, but very few major incidents if any.

There have been the two tragic incidents just on the edge of the Town Centre area, the murders in Derby Road and London Road, and they obviously make people feel particularly vulnerable. I would just encourage people to know that Croydon is statistically incredibly safe; over 100, 000 people are recorded going through the Whitgift Centre alone on an average Saturday, and we have less than 15 crimes a day reported across the whole Town Centre area. Not a bad ratio, although it still can be improved upon. We are effectively a city, if we were officially so we would be the 12th largest in the country I believe. 

I would urge all your contacts etc to continue to pray for the young people of the Borough, and the neighbouring boroughs from which we have a large number come to our schools:

• Pray for peace between schools, a lot of our problems come from inter-school rivalries.
• Pray for those who suffer from the ills of addiction, again a large number have links to our town centre; especially drink, but also gambling.
• Pray for the drug addicts who are just as much victims, preyed upon by unscrupulous dealers who couldn't care less how good or bad the stuff they peddle is…