November 2023 meeting of the Palmers Green Ward Panel (CAPE)

Karl Brown, chair of the Palmers Green Ward Panel (also known as the CAPE), reports on its most recent meeting.

Report, report and report. That was the key message for us all emerging from the latest PG CAPE. Without information, crime statistics will be misleading, and with many more eyes and ears across our community than the police can muster, we are ideally placed to provide intel on potential and actual bad things. We learnt, and well as seeing in pretty much real time, how such information feeds police resource prioritisation and so ultimately helps make PG a better place to live. See my other post to find out how we can all be doing in this task.

The PG CAPE reached its maximum community membership of 25 with three new members: the chair of the borough’s independent police advisory panel, who also brings deep experience in racial issues, plus two members of our local Albanian community. This latter satisfied an earlier membership decision that more needed to be done to increase mutual understanding and work with this group of PG residents. Members from the South Asian and Cypriot communities explained how in their time they too had faced the equivalent problems now being felt by this later community.

Each with over 20 years in the UK, mostly spent in PG, and now with families, businesses, and mortgages both outlined difficulties they, family, friends and colleagues have faced, much being discrimination based on an assumption of an Albanian modus operandi. The CAPE heard a real wish and made a supporting commitment to help build forward towards a better mutual understanding and future for us all. There was strong support from the attending police for this step. More will necessarily follow, not least because no one was promoting perfection in any community. Certainly, we all have a role to play in our individual words and actions. I’ve been hearted by early positive commentary and actions by non-CAPE members when hearing of this intent. This must be good for PG.

For this meeting, as requested, we were joined by the borough’s SNT (Safer Neighbourhood Team) Inspector, who is responsible for 25 wards. Currently there is immense pressure on local resource with high levels of abstraction necessary to support the centre in managing Just Stop Oil and Gaza related issues.

He outlined how inspector and sergeant levels would be increased across wards in the spring, and in summer 2025 he expected a large increase in PCSO numbers, both being in line with the Commissioner’s commitment to safer neighbourhood policing as part of his New Met initiative. Fingers crossed.

On actual crime, residential issues remain stable / low, but this latest period has seen PG continue to suffer from (the national scourge of) shoptheft, albeit recent arrests of local prolific offenders saw immediate impact on the stats. Retail premises themselves have seen numerous burglary attacks. The police had substantial evidence versus the alleged main offender but who was yet to be located. However, immediate steps, in what is hoped to be a fast-track link to be developed between our traders and the police, looked to have solved that one across the meeting. High fives became the order of the day.

Other police initiatives were outlined and while these can’t be specified, we all came away positively. It’s a watch this space for now and we’ll see progress by the next meeting in late January.

Do report, I cannot stress what a difference that can make having now seen the inside. You may not get the timely response you personally wish for, but all the data adds up.

While it’s now at its maximum permissible membership, the CAPE will need a turnover of members over time. Interest in joining should be to the PG SNT, or myself.

Thanks once again to the Fox for hosting this event.