15 January (Part 1) - BiB comes to police attention again
If
I judged the mood correctly I think most people came away from the
police meeting in Thamesmead’s Baptist Church in a somewhat sceptical mood.
Good intentions were everywhere but police commander Peter Ayling was
pessimistic about his ability to maintain the extra patrols into the next
financial year following the fatal stabbing in Wolvercote Road.
In the meantime the police’s Safer Neighbourhoods Team has been helping out with
community activities from football to food banks as well as collaring a good number
of drug takers. Maybe they’ve always done that sort of thing but thanks to PC
Chris Molnar and his Twitter addiction (@MPSThamesmead) anyone can now log in to what he and his
colleagues have been doing to improve Thamesmead.
Over the last few days PC Molnar has been dropping big hints that the Safer
Neighbourhood Team was to be enlarged and that the Greenwich/Bexley borough
boundary would no longer be regarded as a barrier. That was an idea that got
short shrift at the November meeting, someone must have torn up the rule book.
Yesterday the police went
officially public with the news. The last paragraph was unexpected.