Villains will be heading off to Haringey in North London this week as Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair announces that residents there are now happy to leave their front doors open and unlocked.
He said community-based Safer Neighbourhood Teams were making people feel as safe as they did 25 years ago.
Which is probably not very safe.
Metropolitan Police Authority member Damian Hockney told the Times that Sir Ian's remarks were "truly extraordinary". Neil Williams, Liberal Democrat leader on Haringey council, also said he was surprised by the comments. "Community policing has brought enormous benefits in making people safer and encouraging them to report crime. But people still need to take sensible precautions with their home security and I'm sure the police officers in that area would say that too."
Quite.
UPDATE 22.8.06: Sir Ian Blair writes to The Times to say:
I am certainly not advocating people should deliberately leave their doors open. I am, however, very encouraged that the Met’s provision of dedicated local policing teams... is engendering a sense of community in which they have less need to be fearful and hide behind locked doors.
Fair enough. If only that were tha case everywhere – both the local policing and the sense of community.
