How long til privately run neighbourhood police become the norm?

[hotmumshit]

They already exist in some places and use private prosecutions to uphold their values

I personally think its morally wrong, but since when does that matter

I think that home security firms will start providing access to them as part of their services

Welcome to hell

Or the racist morons who kicked off in Southport because they believed that those poor children had been murdered by an immigrant.

@TallSturdyGirls ”Violent crime hasn't been this low for 30ish years”

The gang stuff doesn’t get reported, though. The local businesses who are being attacked or extorted aren’t going to report it. Because that would make them even more unsafe. Definitely happening in some parts of London.

history also gives me the impression this stuff used to go in waves… go back to before I was born and you obviously have the Krays…. But when I left, there was a sense it had been going on a long time and it wasn’t going to change.

UK didn’t used to be so high on the corruption index either (high or low depending on how you look at it) and I think that doesn’t even include things like money laundering!

Sorry but there is no evidence that crime is at it's lowest level in decades besides official government figures which can never be trusted. Governments are always going to try to say that crime is low.

Yes U.K. Home counties border/ outskirts of London.

The only benefit I can see is as PP say you could call someone and they would be there in minutes.

But as I said these are all professional jobs on empty homes. Chancers would be put off anyway as these are gated houses in gated estates with security alarms and cameras. opportunists or petty criminals would already be put off.

The house opposite us actually got broken into whilst we were in. As a family of smokers we would have been in - smoking in the side room - with the side door to the front open looking out. We didn’t hear a thing. See a thing. They are so slick. Silent. Come in through the back and they know how to disable alarms/ cameras.

We also had the neighbour literally 3m from said door have a motorbike stolen from their garage whilst we were also in that room. We don’t actually believe that happened and think that was insurance fraud.

Extortion has been around since I was a kid. My dad used to run a business in Manchester and have to pay extortion money back in the seventies. He never reported it as it was too dangerous. Gangs were rife. Kids at my school went to prison for it and gun crime was bad. At my kids school, which is very near to my old school, they had none of this. Yes it exists but no where near as bad. We lived never a football stadium and had to hide during match days because the ultras would come and fight on our street. Now even when its a derby some of the pubs have people watching both teams in the same pub! Knife crime was awful. Open racism was everywhere. There was chicken wire over loads of the gardens walls to stop burglary. Its so much better now.
And the idea that people used to report everything and they don't now is absolutely rubbish. People often didn't report crime but would deal with it in their own way, which wasn't particularly pleasant. Snitches got stitches around here.

@TallSturdyGirls doesn’t it feel like that now though? If that area is better now that’s great. I really do want to hear the good news!

I was chatting with someone who used to live on an estate with a particularly bad reputation - he grew up there.

He said to me that it feels like it’s loads of pockets of London that are like that now. It’s no longer a case of “ this is a bad area”. There’s just so many of them.

I actually googled his old estate and there are massive efforts being made to change things, which is great. But the crime always seems to just pop up in other areas. Maybe as a society that’s the best we can do.

I have relatives in a country where private security is relatively normal for normal people. I don’t want the UK to become like this. It does say something about the broader societal conditions.

No for me. Nor in London where I work a lot. In a so called rough area. Crime everywhere is very considerably down. The best thing to do is not look at social media so much and get your news from more reasonable sources. Unfortunately, there is a big push to make people feel unsafe as it fits in with a narrative that Reform/Restore want to push for. They feed off fear. So it doesn't work for them to hear that actually crime is getting better, and people are living more safe lives.

@TallSturdyGirls I don’t use social media for that

The reports I hear are from the people in the flats I used to live in, and then some of the people I work with.

Full disclosure, it is a talking point amongst my old neighbours, because it’s one of those areas that used to be okay and then went downhill. There’s even one guy who was born and raised there and wanted to raise his children there who is moving away after a particularly unpleasant incident on his parents road. He’s upset, his parents are upset, but interestingly his wife is quite relieved. She’s not from the UK and she never saw the area when it was better. So she doesn’t really know how heartbreaking it is. I think she finds it hard to believe it was ever nice.

It was a nice block of flats, very well run… and many people are looking to move just because of what’s happened to the local area.

prior to moving, it was all about my own local experience. There’s no way I would use social media to make a judgement like that.

I suspect I know what you’re getting at and i Most certainly wouldn’t put it past Reform. This was one of their first policies when they were voted in. Along with banning Pride displays in libraries because they make straight people “feel marginalised” apparently.

They are an odious bunch of idiots. (This is the cleaned up version of my real feelings).

The estates that need them the most are the ones who hate them!

It’s inevitable it will increase over the next few decades as the U.K. becomes more and more like the US in terms of everything they do is replicated here (speech, consumer habits, city centre crime hell holes and two tiered wealth societies).

I’d predict a surge of out of town gated communities with security springing up very soon. This will likely be on account of the affluent city dwellers in bubble areas (such as Hackney and Islington) starting to get a dose of the crime, ASB and feral youth so many of us mere mortals are having to deal with and deciding they wish to continue living safely.

@PMA1981 that’s such a funny thing for me to read, because I am old enough to remember when Hackney and Islington were really rough and crime ridden.

There were some roads in Hackney I didn’t even want to drive through - I literally had to to get from A to B, but I was always unhappy about it.

that’s actually a classic example of cities going up and down… and up again. It’s just this time. I think a lot of us can’t see when the up is coming.

you know one section was called the Murder Mile in the early 2000s… and I think it still ranks quite high in terms of London crime.

We have private prisons and private court staff/escorts. I personally don’t agree with them privatisation has already hit the justice sector.

@hotmumshit this thread prompted me to look up crime by London borough

You talk about winning the lottery and moving to Chelsea… I don’t know if that’s going to solve the issues that are worrying you. Maybe look at the crime map and move somewhere else when you win the lottery…

We’ll have a period of serious civil unrest that will accelerate the creation of ghettos, enclaves and other sequestered areas. That will accelerate private security services more akin to the police. Civil war was predicted in the U.K. circa 2029 over 20 years ago and I used to think it was an unlikely dystopian scenario, but I can now see how accurate it potentially is. Scary AF.

I lived on murder mile. I thought people were stupid to buy houses there. Now I wish I had. It's way safer.

@Constantrunner safer than some of the neighbouring areas, yes.

They often do these big clean ups on problem areas.

And it leads to this...
BBC News - Operation Vanguard security patrol 'abused power', council told - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crlyk27484wyo?app-referrer=deep-link

100% agree with you

It hasn't come about how we thought it would - but it has come about.

@EmeraldRoulette gated community with paid for security - thats all you need in this life, sad as it fucking is

Honestly I think normal citizens should be able to form their own neighbourhood defence forces to patrol and regulate their own area. Not everyone can afford to pay external contractors to do this and the police clearly aren't up to the task nowadays.

The village has private security, and as others say it’s not unheard of in Hertfordshire which is just north of London.

its not within the reach of 99% of the British population, financially.

Trouble is that some of the residents will take it too far, abuse their powers, etc.

I was in the police in the 80s when neighbourhood watch was a big thing and our group were tasked with liaising with several groups which meant us attending local meetings in church/village halls etc to help set them up, patrolling the areas whilst meetings were taking place (as it was thought burglars may target areas on meeting nights if they knew lots of residents weren't in their homes!), random visits to the areas when out on patrol duties, etc. Most ran pretty well, and those involved followed the guidance, i.e. don't approach dodgy people, note number plates of suspicious vehicles, generally keep an eye open for suspicious things, keep windows and doors locked, valuables out of sight, etc., and they brought communities together as people started looking out for each other when their neighbours were out etc.

Unfortunately in some, there was the over-officious types who took over and actually started "patrolling" their streets, generally making a nuisance of themselves, knocking on neighbours doors "telling" them to close an open window or to remove visible valuable items from their car etc., and some even making citizen's arrests of people doing things that even the regular police wouldn't arrest for.

I do think it needs to be restricted to proper/respected security firms, the kind who already exist to patrol/supervise commercial premises, events, etc., so that there is some kind of basic training, supervision and management of them.

The thing for me is

The police are supposed to treat everyone equally. They don't obviously but its a standard they 'strive' for

Private firms will not be doing that. So if youre a married respectable white woman, to a strong white man - you'll fair fine

If youre a minority, overtly working class, a single mum, disabled but refusing to be downtrodden - you aren't expericing the same treatment from them.

Terrifying times.

Don't be so melodramatic OP. They aren't private police. They have no more rights than ordinary citizens.

They do not have the right to access your data, prosecute you or fine you.

Private security patrols exist on high end estates but are salaried neighbourhood watch. They can make a citizen's arrest if appropriate but that is all. It's no different from having bouncers on club doors or shop detectives in department stores. They are there to observe, discourage crime and to step in and sit on people until the police arrive, or eject people from private premises.