Tag: Neighbourhood Alert

A lack of service

We have come across a number of issues, which show that neither police or MOPAC show the required duty of care to local residents.

There are many complaints, expression of uncertainties, frustrations voiced on various social media platforms, which do not result in action by police or MOPAC.

Just recently a user of NextDoor posted this leaflet that had been put through their door in the St. Lukes Neighbourhood (NextDoor region) and it shows an out-of-date leaflet with a Neighbourhood Watch logo that is no longer in use. No wonder people think the leaflet is a scam. It proves that police just do not up-date their material to be in line with current procedures.

Actually police no longer work closely with Neighbourhood Watch and have lost an important relationship to local people.

That being out of touch culminated in the abhorrent search of a young pupil in a Hackney school, for which police again had to issue an apology. That comes after the Wayne Couzens apology already been given and not accepted by MOPAC.

Though MOPAC delivered a notice of no trust in the Commissioner Cressida Dick, we are not certain that the Commissioner is the main reason for the lack of care.

Mopac themselves do not monitor the Neighbourhood Watch capabilities of the London Boroughs. We have sent numerous complaints, which have been answered but issues were not addressed. The latest agenda of the Tower Hamlets Safer Neighbourhood Board again, stoically invites a representative for Neighbourhood Watch who has not attended any meetings during the last two years and who is not involved in Neighbourhood Watch. The Tower Hamlets Safer Neighbourhood Board refuses to allow the Neighbourhood Watch Association to speak on behalf of Neighbourhood Watch.

As one of our articles clearly shows, the one time police worked closely and interactively with Neighbourhood Watch started 10 years ago, and then the crime rate dipped significantly. As soon as MOPAC supported OWL, the crime rate stayed permanently high, apart from seasonal and Covid dips. It is a matter of attitude and tools used how effective the relationship between police and local people can improve the situation.

This proves to us that MOPAC has no right to merely blame the Commissioner for all the shortcomings in policing.

We have endlessly argued with police and MOPAC that they need to purchase the license to use Ourwatch / Neighbourhood Alert, as most police forces in England do and those forces have far lower crime rates than we do. OWL has become synonymous with high crime rates. Whilst police give us the permission to administer the membership on the Ourwatch platform, the police themselves use OWL, which has no connection to Neighbourhood Watch groups in the borough, other than sending out occasional newsletters to those who have subscribed to the service.

We want to urge all those who care, to register with Ourwatch, join the association and help improve our local crime rates. Unfortunately as it looks at present police will prescribe only to social media platforms, which have the most subscribers. We must however make it quite clear that a subscription to NextDoor, Facebook alone, does not give you membership with Neighbourhood Watch unless you are actually registered with Neighbourhood Watch on the Ourwatch platform and verified with the borough association.

We do see the frustrations voiced on the social media platforms but to effectively achieve changes we need to work together with the borough association to get this done.

Breaking up national unity

Why it is that UK Police of all organisations is trying to break up National Unity is beyond my understanding. We usually hear about Scottish and Irish and perhaps sometimes Welsh nationalists trying to break away but they never mention the Police Force.

That is a very important in respect of Neighbourhood Watch and keeping records of Neighbourhood Watch members and the mailing lists of such people.

Neighbourhood Watch has around 3.5 Million members nationwide, at least the ones who are registered on Neighbourhood Alert and or Ourwatch.

But, the UK Police has come up with a way to break up the National Neighbourhood Watch Network by inventing OWL.

Yet, we have no Neighbourhood Watch system with OWL. We get one way mailings from council and police but nothing by way of Neighbourhood Watch groups coordinators. Picture redacted

People are told that OWL is now the new Neighbourhood Watch system. Yet, there are no watch coordinators visible on OWL as Ourwatch schemes do not get transferred. Continue to register with Ourwatch for schemes.

In fact we have not had anybody in Tower Hamlets trained on OWL, despite OWL presenting themselves as the new Neighbourhood Watch system. We do however train people on using Ourwatch. Our volunteers are protected and insured by Ourwatch. See related article.

Whilst the National Neighbourhood Watch Network has an excellent system of volunteer care and training, OWL does not. We have not been provided with any information about that from OWL.

It would be perfectly easy and feasible for all police forces to simply subscribe to Neighbourhood Alert and run all their Neighbourhood Watch related mailing lists via that extremely secure system, but no, UK Police has split up the national Neighbourhood Watch system into chunks of areas, where they introduced OWL.

Yet, most national crime prevention providers are all subscribed first-hand to the National Neighbourhood Alert system and send our scam warnings with the touch of a button to Millions of users.

Whilst OWL does not receive those very same messages at the same very fast pace.

Picture slightly fuzzy as it is taken from a moving screen

I think enough is enough, UK Police has to stop splitting up Neighbourhood Watch and try to create an off-shoot of Neighbourhood Watch with OWL.

Not even the new OWL App has any new developments in respect of crime reporting, they simply re-direct people to the Met Police website. We do not need an App for that, we can do that ourselves.

I have asked OWL to provide us with their policy on volunteer training and their volunteer care policy but nothing has been provided.

Ii think that OWL is one way that parts of UK Police try to break up national unity. There are only 9 London boroughs and Hertfordshire fully working on OWL, the rest of the Country is not.

Our first public meeting

Since our Charity registration was completed with the Charity Commission, we held our first public meeting with surprising results.

It was refreshing to hear how openly, those attending, discussed their personal, professional and public issues to do with personal and community safety.

Tower Hamlets Community Safety Officer John Fortune and 3 Tower Hamlets Safer Neighbourhoods Officers and Anne Ambrose, who sits on the Safer Neighbourhood Board, discuss Community Safety at our meeting. As well as No Place for Hate representative Benedicta Dikeocha and Junior Lawyer President Avion Headley all spoke on the issue of Race Hate and equality.

Pictures do not show all those attending. Minutes of the meeting are published here.

We thank all those attending meetings and seeing us at other public events, those who ask questions and want to know more about Neighbourhood Watch.

Then those who come to see us from other areas of London are always very pleased to hear that they can register with any address in Great Britain on the same website Ourwatch and get automatically allocated to their local scheme, area representative and connect to their local borough or force association.

That became especially clear at the recent HARCA event on Teviot estate.

It became clear that publications, which describe OWL as advanced solution for police & communities, are in fact not correct as OWL is not as advanced as it is described on this Council website.

An Ourwatch mapping system, showing both street based watches and a social media cover watch.
  • The most important issue is that the vast majority of crime prevention alerts are sent out via Ourwatch or Neighbourhood Alert to all those registered with those services. I know that from personal experience as I am both registered with OWL and Ourwatch. Those messages sent through Ourwatch reach over 1/4 of the UK population, whilst OWL hardly ever sends out crime alerts and OWL messages reach only a very limited number of recipients. In fact we get more messages on open platform Twitter than from OWL.
  • Watch registration is more advanced on Ourwatch as you actually have a choice to map your watch area to an area of your choice – if available – and you are not forced to accept a whole post code for your watch area but you also have a choice to have several post codes as your watch area and can run more than one watch scheme both on the streets and online. You can register a watch encompassing a street, an estate or only one building.
  • On our version of OWL, there are no co-ordinators listed, whilst on Ourwatch you can create, maintain and develop your own scheme. OWL is available only in a very small area of Britain (a few London boroughs) and doesn’t interconnect with the rest of the national system.