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The Sunday Times
December 05, 2004
If New York can tame them, so can we
Americans say London’s increasingly lawless streets resemble New York’s in the 1980s. ‘Zero tolerance’ changed all that. Now British police have to follow suit, experts tell Jack Grimston
Hampstead Garden Suburb was one of the jewels of the Edwardian town planning revolution. For nearly a century its mix of Arts and Crafts cottages and grand mansions among woodland and lawns in northwest London seemed an idyllic community, only seven miles from the heart of the capital.
No longer. Former Gurkha soldiers now patrol pavements, flush out intruders and escort scared residents into their homes. A security firm on the suburb’s website offers “plainclothes, alarm, armed response, internal theft and loss prevention servicesâ€.
Rosemary Gardener, an artist living in one of the grander houses, has felt the dread grow daily. Both her elderly neighbours were mugged, she was robbed twice and her car broken into three times. The police did a good follow-up job but she lost faith in their ability to prevent more crimes.
Then one afternoon she saw a prowler peering through a window. Ducking under her kitchen table, she watched as an axehead smashed through her front door. Her collie dog, Tulip, confronted the intruder, a tall blond man in black.
“She was barking at him and he was kicking at her, trying to shut her up and swiping at her with a steel bar,†Gardener said last week. “I was so scared I just stayed crouched there while he bashed my poor dog over the head. He smashed her skull into pieces, so goodness knows what he would have done to me if he had found me.â€
Gardener (not her real name) was an eager subscriber when her neighbours clubbed together soon afterwards to set up a security firm employing former soldiers to mount patrols on their streets that the police did not provide.
“When I come home I call them as I am approaching the road and a Gurkha always meets me from my car and escorts me to my front door and carries my bags,†she said.
The well-heeled residents of Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea also took their security into their own hands after a crimewave in their street, one of the richest in Britain. But the security cameras they installed could not prevent a murderous attack last week.
Intruders stabbed John and Homeyra Monckton in the hallway of their four-storey home at 7.30 on Tuesday evening. Monckton, a City fund manager, bled to death; his wife was saved by an ambulance crew called by the couple’s nine-year-old daughter.
The attack was one of a series of high-profile crimes this year that have stoked middle-class fears of crime in the capital. One night in August Amélie Delagrange, a French student, was clubbed to death on Twickenham Green, west London. The following month Derek Robinson, a retired paediatrician, was stabbed to death with his wife, Jean, at their home in Highgate, north London. In October Robert Symons, a businessman who had retrained as a teacher, was also stabbed to death at home in Chiswick, west London.
Increasingly, residents feel afraid to walk the streets at night. And even at home they feel vulnerable: London’s elegant townhouses not only act as beacons to criminals but also open straight onto the pavement, offering little defence against invasion.
“It’s an insidious fear that creeps up on one,†said Vanya Lambert, a neighbour of the Moncktons. Other neighbours have suffered burglaries and knifepoint muggings.
Throughout the capital well-to-do enclaves are trying to protect themselves. Private security firms patrol parts of Kensington, St John’s Wood, Primrose Hill and Little Venice. But the number of attacks continues to rise. The number of people mugged in October was up by 16% in London compared with the same month last year — and by 70% in Chelsea.
Figures collated for Civitas, the think tank, show that muggings used to be rare. Between 1893 and 1941 there were never more than 400 a year recorded in England and Wales. Between February and December 2001 there were at least 400 a month in the London borough of Lambeth alone.
The Sunday Times
December 05, 2004
If New York can tame them, so can we
Americans say London’s increasingly lawless streets resemble New York’s in the 1980s. ‘Zero tolerance’ changed all that. Now British police have to follow suit, experts tell Jack Grimston
Hampstead Garden Suburb was one of the jewels of the Edwardian town planning revolution. For nearly a century its mix of Arts and Crafts cottages and grand mansions among woodland and lawns in northwest London seemed an idyllic community, only seven miles from the heart of the capital.
No longer. Former Gurkha soldiers now patrol pavements, flush out intruders and escort scared residents into their homes. A security firm on the suburb’s website offers “plainclothes, alarm, armed response, internal theft and loss prevention servicesâ€.
Rosemary Gardener, an artist living in one of the grander houses, has felt the dread grow daily. Both her elderly neighbours were mugged, she was robbed twice and her car broken into three times. The police did a good follow-up job but she lost faith in their ability to prevent more crimes.
Then one afternoon she saw a prowler peering through a window. Ducking under her kitchen table, she watched as an axehead smashed through her front door. Her collie dog, Tulip, confronted the intruder, a tall blond man in black.
“She was barking at him and he was kicking at her, trying to shut her up and swiping at her with a steel bar,†Gardener said last week. “I was so scared I just stayed crouched there while he bashed my poor dog over the head. He smashed her skull into pieces, so goodness knows what he would have done to me if he had found me.â€
Gardener (not her real name) was an eager subscriber when her neighbours clubbed together soon afterwards to set up a security firm employing former soldiers to mount patrols on their streets that the police did not provide.
“When I come home I call them as I am approaching the road and a Gurkha always meets me from my car and escorts me to my front door and carries my bags,†she said.
The well-heeled residents of Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea also took their security into their own hands after a crimewave in their street, one of the richest in Britain. But the security cameras they installed could not prevent a murderous attack last week.
Intruders stabbed John and Homeyra Monckton in the hallway of their four-storey home at 7.30 on Tuesday evening. Monckton, a City fund manager, bled to death; his wife was saved by an ambulance crew called by the couple’s nine-year-old daughter.
The attack was one of a series of high-profile crimes this year that have stoked middle-class fears of crime in the capital. One night in August Amélie Delagrange, a French student, was clubbed to death on Twickenham Green, west London. The following month Derek Robinson, a retired paediatrician, was stabbed to death with his wife, Jean, at their home in Highgate, north London. In October Robert Symons, a businessman who had retrained as a teacher, was also stabbed to death at home in Chiswick, west London.
Increasingly, residents feel afraid to walk the streets at night. And even at home they feel vulnerable: London’s elegant townhouses not only act as beacons to criminals but also open straight onto the pavement, offering little defence against invasion.
“It’s an insidious fear that creeps up on one,†said Vanya Lambert, a neighbour of the Moncktons. Other neighbours have suffered burglaries and knifepoint muggings.
Throughout the capital well-to-do enclaves are trying to protect themselves. Private security firms patrol parts of Kensington, St John’s Wood, Primrose Hill and Little Venice. But the number of attacks continues to rise. The number of people mugged in October was up by 16% in London compared with the same month last year — and by 70% in Chelsea.
Figures collated for Civitas, the think tank, show that muggings used to be rare. Between 1893 and 1941 there were never more than 400 a year recorded in England and Wales. Between February and December 2001 there were at least 400 a month in the London borough of Lambeth alone.
