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The police arrest a man suspected of criminal damage at Gospel Oak Station |
‘For the police, Halloween is an annual, living nightmare’
Paul Keilthy goes on patrol with members of the CID to experience the mayhem of Halloween
PEOPLE stagger through the city centre dripping with blood; masked men stride openly through the streets. Extortion is tolerated, and elaborate disguise is the rule, not the exception. And all this is legal.
For the police, Halloween is a nightmare. Every year, crime surges to twice or three times the average nightly rate. This year, Halloween fell on a Saturday, and the day of the Arsenal v. Tottenham derby, compounding the potential for violence.
The New Journal observed the night from the car of Detective Sgt Mick “Muddy” Waters, a senior detective in the CID’s robbery squad.
In the course of the night, DS Waters and his partner will be first on the scene of an attempted armed robbery at a Kentish Town grocer’s shop, pour away Martini confiscated from 16-year-olds drinking in the street in Chalk Farm, assist in the arrest of a man suspected of smashing up Gospel Oak train station.
They take a robbery victim, mugged in Arlington Road, on a tour of the streets around Camden Town and, at 3am, stand guard at the entrance of UCL’s psychology faculty in Bloomsbury while sniffer dogs try to find a burglar in its miles of corridors – description: “He was dressed as the Joker.”
All the while, DS Waters is co-ordinating other officers on the ground.
The radio is crackling: at times it seems that dozens of police officers are tied up chasing firework-throwing children through estates. Once out of their cars in places like Wendling, Waxham and Bacton in Gospel Oak, the officers have difficulty with their Airwave radio sets, which slip in and out of transmission and reception areas.
When officers go off-air, colleagues hurry to the scene in case they are in trouble. Around 8pm, this is starting to affect response times to incidents like robberies or assaults – people are calling 999 but having to wait for a patrol.
But there are no gang clashes and few instances of serious violence. While by midnight, faced with youth violence, the neighbouring boroughs all had to invoke the controversial “section 60” powers that allow police to stop and search people without grounds, Camden did not.
DS Waters starts the night patrolling places like the Rowley Way estate in West Hampstead, where graffiti extolling the ASA gang – linked to a double shooting in July – is allowed to linger on pavements and walls. A lack of violence is a success.
Every Safer Neighbourhoods team in London was put on a night shift, and leave was cancelled on Saturday.
Statistics loom over everything. Home Office targets require Camden to cut robberies and burglaries and increase the number of crimes they solve. A night when there is traditionally a lot of crime is a night when it is possible to make a dent in the statistics.
In Chalk Farm, police with drug sniffer dogs prowled around the Tube station and the queue to the Roundhouse, which was hosting a gig by Shpongle, a psychedelic dance band. By 9pm, police had cautioned or arrested 15 people for possession of drugs.
This may or may not make Camden Town a safer place. But the statistics will help Camden Police’s performance sheet – each warning counts as a case solved, with equal statistical weight to solving a murder – and venues often request such checks because they don’t want drugs in their premises.
Meanwhile, reports of robberies crackled over the radio. There were 13 in total over the weekend, a significant fall on last year when there were 23 over Halloween. But on average, there are fewer than three robberies a day across Camden.
A consolation for detectives is that 12 people have been arrested on suspicion of robbery; three are charged on Monday morning.
Statistically, the night is a success. Crime is down on last year. But it’s not all about statistics. Sometime after midnight DS Waters spotted a young woman sitting disconsolately, disorientated and alone in Arlington Road. After a fatherly chat, he drives her home. She is too confused to be grateful, but she is safe, out of harm’s way.
It is an unofficial kindness. There are no targets for that.
Shopkeeper fights off masked raiders
A LONE 32-year-old shop worker fought off two masked men who brandished a gun as they tried to rob his Kentish Town grocery on Saturday night.
Cuma Altundal suffered a head wound when the pair, both in Halloween masks, attacked him when he refused to hand over the takings from The Falkland Stores in Falkland Road.
But Mr Altundal succeeded in running the robbers out empty-handed. He said: “They came to the store and asked for trick or treat but then they put a brown or black gun to my head. I fought with one of them and the other got the ticket gun and threw it at my head. I kept fighting. They got nothing. They ran away.”
The New Journal was accompanying detectives who were first on the scene of the attempted robbery at 10pm.
While Mr Altundal received treatment in an ambulance, police patrols searched neighbouring streets for the robbers, who had fled towards Willington Terrace and Leighton Road still wearing their masks.
Because the case is classed as an attempted armed robbery of a business it is being investigated by the Flying Squad.
A Met police statement said: “The suspects are described as black, aged about 20 years old and around 6ft tall. Both suspects were wearing masks – one of the masks is described as black with white vertical stripes.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Finchley Flying Squad on 0208 3585 1752 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. |
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