The Metropolitan Police today (31 July) announced that Brixton will be one of the London crime and anti-social behaviour hotspots to see more police patrols.
As part of a new “uplift” in policing the capital, town centre teams of extra officers are to be added to Brixton’s existing neighbourhood teams where the problems of theft, open drug dealing and abuse, aggressive begging and other forms of antisocial behaviour are most rife.
In central Brixton, the Met intends to have four more sergeants and 24 more police constables patrolling the central streets leading to Windrush Square.
In Southwark, the same number will be similarly deployed, mostly in central Peckham.
Detective Superintendent Emma Bond, commander jointly of Lambeth and Southwark’s basic command unit (BCU), said she hoped the new teams would be in place by the end of 2025.
Recruitment has begun but will not be achieved overnight. The police presence will be “demand led” to where Brixton and Southwark’s crime hotspots are.
DI Bond explained that police commissioners have had to make “tough choices about how to use the Met’s resources more effectively to better police our neighbourhood and town centres.”
These decisions have been made against a backdrop of a “shrinking workforce and smaller budgets”.
She went on to say: “There’s been more of an emphasis on moving our neighbourhood policing teams into a community crimefighting space, to deal with shoplifting, which we’re seeing has been rising across the country.”
Other focal points are phone snatches, also on the increase, and violence against women and girls.
To those who think the emphasis on tackling shoplifters is just about protecting businesses rather than communities, the Met would say that the thieves who aggressively target local shops are part of a fabric of criminality that gets tackled in the process.
DS Bond said: “It ties in with a more general increase in retail crime. Our neighbourhood teams work with the BIDs – the local business districts – so that, together with our partners, we can address that crime.
“Phone snatches are on the increase as well – and are the sort of neighbourhood crime being dealt with under this community crimefighting focus.”
DI Bond said the Met has reviewed its resourcing in some areas “and reinvested it or evolved it into something else”, rather than starving other needy areas of policing.
Commissioners, she said, were “using greater efficiency with resources they’ve got.”
The Met has also had an injection of extra funds this year.
After submitting its draft budget for 2025/26, the Met secured £32m in additional funding from City Hall and the Home Office to offset reduced total officer and staff numbers in priority areas.
According to the announcement of the reallocation of resources: “This funding is broken down into two parts. About £20m will be used directly to tackle violent crime; and a further £12m will be used to reduce the tough choices the Met previously planned for in their draft budget, focusing on improving performance to drive down crime, particularly in catching high harm and wanted offenders.”
The extra funding will also bolster the Met’s Flying Squad with more than 50 additional officers to support neighbourhood police as they tackle organised crime gangs that fuel phone robbery and shoplifting.
The Met will scale up its use of live facial recognition (LFR) more widely supported by additional officers and staff.
It said that LFR is currently used four times a week across two days, but this will increase up to five days a week, delivering up to 10 deployments a week across London.
The Met’s public order crime team will be expanded “to accommodate the rise in protest-related criminal investigations” to ensure frontline officers are freed up to focus on local issues.
The Met is inviting Londoners to get more involved in their neighbourhood policing by accessing Met Engage, an online forum offering updates directly from local officers and allowing residents to have their say on policing in their area:
