Acton Town Centre

Dear Residents,

                        Just an update on how the policing of Acton Town Centre is going. I am the only Officer on this team, as we don't have a specific TC Team, like other town centres. I have 2 other officers who are part of the South Acton Ward, but this inevitably means they focus more on the estate itself. We also have our PCSO who helps in both areas.

Currently I am focusing a lot of my time on the group of street drinkers that congregate on the Mount and I have identified the worst 3 in terms of ASB, drunkenness and theft and I have issued Community Protection Notices. As a result of them ignoring these Notices I have charged them with 35 breaches of their CPNs. I am now in the process of building Community Behaviour Orders against them with the clear aim of banning them from Acton.

We are also very aware of the drug dealers who use the town centre as their Market place. It is a complex issue as they work in groups of the three or four and though we know the main dealer, even yesterday we found him with over £500 in £10 and £20s but the drugs are usually stored elsewhere with younger people acting as runners. 

We have set up Operations to catch him, and have carried out numerous searches, all to no avail. We wont give up, and will continue to try. The easist thing we can do is again ban them Acton. 
It doesn't stop them dealing drugs, but it does stop them doing it in our town centre.

For both of these types of instances you can really help us.

We get your messages and your calls, but they very rarely include enough details. Yesterday's call was a rare exception. 
It gave us an exact location, a clear explanation of what was happening, and clear descriptions of who was doing what. It allows us to attend, detain everyone and search them.

What really helps is descriptions. We know all the dealers very well, they are all distinctive and have clearly identifiable things that we know. When the dealer from yesterday was called out over the radio we attended because we knew who he was, and that this was a good chance to disrupt at the very least.

Things that help are clothing, size, hair styles, facial hair and so on.

This all comes with a clear warning. Be careful, do not stand in the street filming them, or taking photos. These rarely help as they are often blurry and rushed. But they also put you at risk.

I will keep working on these issues an the other things that arise, we are trying to work smart and find long term solutions to our issues rather than quick fixes. 
Hopefully you are beginning to see changes on the Mount and I feel it is slowly improving. Hopefully you are beginning to see changes too. 

Any way thank you for your support and keep in touch.

PC Dave Loveday