Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Clayman is in charge of policing in the East Area Basic Command Unit
Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Clayman says 2020 has seen the East Area BCU, which covers the three boroughs, face very different challenges to previous years, with an increase in some crimes but a decline in others.
Telling Time 107.5FM about the first lockdown, which began in March, he said: “We saw reductions in burglary, reductions in robbery and street-based crime, which was encouraging and understandable given there weren’t so many people out on the street.
“But we did see, more worryingly, some corresponding increases in hidden crime like domestic abuse, and other things that happen behind closed doors.”
Superintendent Clayman said additional work was being undertaken on combating domestic abuse, aiming to respond and make arrests more swiftly to help protect victims.
Other crimes that saw an increase included online exploitation, and reports of anti-social behaviour which was predominantly to do with non-compliance to coronavirus regulations. But there has been a difference from the first lockdown to the second.
“At the beginning, we were able to put additional capacity into our proactive element of policing,” said Mr. Clayman. “More stops, more productive work by officers because some of the crime demand had dropped and it gave us more capacity to do other police work that we wanted to do.
“There was a point in the lockdown when the only people who should have been out and about were key workers going to and from work. Some offending like drug supply was still operating so it gave us a much greater ability to be more targeted and successfully so. It was stopping vehicles where we had success seizing drugs and that type of thing. It was a good opportunity for officers to be more proactive.”
To help deal with reports of Covid non-compliance, the BCU has one car in each borough on patrol to respond to reports from local residents.
“We’ve also recently put additional officers in high footfall areas to manage some of that visibility and re-enforcement of where we need to be involved in some of those enforcement situations,” Mr. Clayman tells Time 107.5FM. “And we’ve also had, periodically, things like Unlicensed Music Events (UMEs) and house parties that we’ve had to break up and we will enforce.
“There may be some who feel this isn’t our role but actually it is. We’re working very closely with the councils on this. We regularly speak about premises that cause us concern, businesses that are not compliant, and we will deal with them accordingly.
“We will respond to reports of UMEs and we will be quite robust with our enforcement and I make no apologies for that because if you’ve got an event which has got several hundred people, that is a huge risk and we only have to look at the north-east region, particularly these three boroughs, to see that we’ve got some of the highest (coronavirus) infection levels in London.”
But dealing with those who are not abiding by the rules brings different challenges.
“There are two risks,” as Superintendent Clayman puts it. “Police officers have to police the public so they’re putting themselves at risk automatically on the front line, so they have to take care. There’s disorder and there’s obviously risk of infection so it’s two-fold.”
Officers are using the “Four E’s” method to deal with those suspected of flouting rules.
First of all, officers Engage with people, Explain why they think rules are being broken, and Encourage the suspect to change their behaviour to reduce the risk to public safety and health.
If those three do not work, the police can then Enforce, and tell them to disperse, tell parents to stop their children from breaking the rules, or fine them. If someone continues to ignore the instructions, the police can arrest them if they think it is proportionate and necessary.
“When it comes to some of the more blatant breaches, we’ll take a much firmer, quicker view around fines because it’s a huge risk,” Mr. Clayman says. “But outside of that, we want officers to Explain to people and Encourage them to comply because this is a serious problem and it is a pandemic. We have a role to play and we shouldn’t make any apologies for having to undertake the role that we’ve been asked to do.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines coming, but we’ve just got to hold our nerve on this and make sure we don’t put more pressure on the NHS while we manage this. We have a defined role to do and I want my officers to undertake that role fairly, but often they will need to be more robust at times.”
Mr. Clayman also says that the public has a role to play. Intelligence from residents can help stop UMEs sooner.
“If they hear of an event happening, we need to know about it because the quicker we can shut it down and stop people going to it, the better. Once an event is up and running, it takes more effort and more police officers to manage it.
“This is [about] being sensible about stopping infection because if people are ignoring it, and going to these events, all they are doing potentially is spreading the infection; bringing it back to their households and bringing it to others and that’s how infections spread – because they’re ignoring the rules that public health have advised (us to follow). [It’s the] same with house parties, they’re just the opportunity to spread the virus and people leave those parties and then will spread to others potentially. That’s what the enforcement is trying to minimise.”
Looking ahead to Christmas, Superintendent Clayman is urging people to stick to the rules, which will allow up to three households to meet from 23-27 December with no social distancing.
But it must be the same households at all time; you are not allowed to meet with two other households one day, and two different ones the next day.
But Mr. Clayman has said reinforced the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s message that the force has no intention of spoiling family time during the festive period.
“I think Cressida Dick was quite clear that we’re not going to be knocking doors down during Christmas dinners, that’s not what we’re here about,” he says. “We’re all in the same boat, we’ve all got extended families that we’d like to see but this Christmas will be slightly different and we have to accept that.
“It’s difficult for all of us, even those who are being asked to enforce, we have to abide by the rules so it is tricky. All we ask is for people to think about why the rules are in place: because we’re trying to keep people safe, that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do.
“Our officers are there to respond to threat, risk, and harm. So we don’t want to be knocking on people’s doors, and we’re not planning to be knocking on people’s doors on Christmas Day to ask them how many people are in their house.”
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Tags: Havering, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham
