Get the police back out on the streets

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Wander this week down Kensington's Victoria Road and you will find the blossom buds and white stucco darkened by unfamiliar shadows. Large men in heavy boots and black jackets mingle with passers-by. By their side are large alsatians on leather leashes.

This is London's new bobby-on-the-beat, privatesector style. The guards come from Crown Protection Services and are hired by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The council and its residents have lost faith in the Metropolitan Police.

I am losing faith too. I am deeply sceptical of most crime figures. They tend to measure whatever police statisticians have decided to measure and whatever message they wish to convey. On the whole, serious crime in Britain is declining and that is good. But yesterday's London street-crime figures are, on any showing, appalling. A 50 per cent rise on a year ago and 18 per cent up on the month cannot be explained as a statistical blip. Something is going wrong.

I am equally sceptical of anecdotal evidence. But I do have the temperature of my home street, and it is beyond argument that the London figures are reflected locally.

Since surveillance cameras were installed in the adjacent shopping area, burglaries and shoplifting have become daily occurrences. Walls have erupted in graffiti. The early-morning pavement crunches with shattered car windows. Primrose Hill's neighbourhood welcome is a permanent bright-yellow sign requesting witnesses and thus advertising the latest local atrocity. They will ask for blood donors next.

I no longer care how many Metropolitan Police are claimed to exist "in London". I do not care how many cars they have, or computers or helicopters or training schemes or annual conferences. They are not in my London. In days when the capital had far fewer constables at its disposal than now, there was still one for every beat. Indeed, a beat is supposedly the distance over which one constable could summon another by beating his nightstick on the pavement.

Today, my local street is "policed", if that is the word, by two individuals, the traffic warden and the Big Issue seller. Neither is a fearless crime-buster, but their presence is mildly reassuring. They are potential witnesses. Since the bourgeois Home Office regards parking as the one serious "street crime" in the capital and devotes more wardens to conquering it than it does police, I cannot see why wardens cannot be used as auxiliary-constables. Any is better-than none.

Dial 999 in my street and the scene is comical. Within the Whitehall-approved response time of five minutes a gleaming police car arrives, its siren audible from a mile away. The villains have, of course, fled. But a police visitation in Primrose Hill is Evita Peron in a Buenos Aires slum. Residents come out to peer with wonder. Each pleads his or her woe. We can still remember the time last year when a foot patrol passed through our village, two officers chatting in bullet-proof vests. We assumed they were "four-handed" and in armour for fear of ratepayer assault.

At the time I challenged the Met to explain exactly where were London's supposed 26,000 policemen and women. The number allocated to borough policing was 16,000. Yet on Police Federation estimates, only about 1,000 were on duty at any one time and many of them were off sick. Until this month's "Operation Safer Streets", beat policing had virtually died out. Westminster has fewer beat constables on duty than are warming themselves inside the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street. MPs insist on policemen to open their doors, while leaving Westminster Council to spend £1 million on private security guards to police the West End. I notice it takes six motorcycle policemen to get 16 Life Guards the length of The Mall. This is more than are on duty in the whole of Covent Garden. This is total madness.

I do not want Crown Protection. I want police protection. Mr Blunkett says I cannot have it because police conditions of service mean that the Met must spend more money cosseting the Met than guarding the public. We are told that 300 traffic police have been diverted to fight street crime, leading to a significant fall in the latter. Why did it take a public outcry to secure this diversion? And why can beat officers not also direct traffic?

Mr Blunkett is planning a new corps of Community Support Officers with the power to give fixed penalties for anti-social behaviour and make citizens' arrests. All I can say is, not before time. The Police Federation cheekily protests that such officers will not be "proper police". It is right. They will not be off sick, sitting in the canteen or retiring early on full pay. They will be patrolling the streets and deterring petty wrongdoers.

London crime is not a matter of statistics. It is a matter of public confidence. New Yorkers still have a higher crime rate than does London. But with the same police budget and the same population, they can field 12,000 more police and enjoy fast-declining crime and renewed personal security.

The reason for this is no longer in any doubt. It was crudely put by one New York police officer working with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in London this week. In London, 10 cops sit in an office for every one on the street. In New York one cop sits in an office for every 10 on the street. Those on the street tolerate nothing, not even loud noise or peeing against the wall.

London is not short of police. It employs 26,000 of them. But a conspiracy of managers and unions flatly refuses to deploy them properly. People are therefore having to hire their own. This is ridiculous.