Private security or public safety?

I phrase this blog post as a question as I have begun to worry, particularly this week, that it is impossible to have both public safety and private security at the same time. I mean this in reference only to street crime; not always the most serious type of crime, but certainly the most prevalent and most commonly experienced.

In theory the safety of our streets, provided for us by the police service, (public) should be enough to secure the safety of our homes, our cars and other property as well as our families (private). In reality of course, limited police resources restrict them to a more reactive role and no matter how fast they respond to a 999 call, more often than not they arrive too late.

So eventually, after the third or fourth burglary or maybe just one truly harrowing assault, we look to other means of protecting ourselves. We use state of the art technology for our homes and cars, security firms to patrol our roads, and perhaps even hand-held weapons to defend ourselves and our families.

This was precisely the context of the congregation of tired and frightened neighbours I observed on Monday night. Approximately 50 of us turned up to the attractive mini mansion owned by our gracious host, himself a victim of several burglaries. He had invited us there to hear Peter Williams, who runs a private security firm called London Community Services, pitch to us his firm's private security package, by his own admission the most expensive of those offered by all security services in north London.

Mr Williams was a large gentleman whose default expression was 'hard-arse'. Running a security firm seemed like a natural progression for him, probably from being a pub bouncer and school bully before that. After all this was a man who had retired Ghurkas working for him. In fact they, he boasted, were the reason his firm was so expensive - apparently no-one is better placed to guarantee the safety of your children than a gang of short, angry Asian men with broken English and a chip on their shoulder.

In any case his pitch was terrible. It amounted to him telling us that we must buy into his security scheme after admitting that he thought it would never work when originally approached by our caped crusader neighbour; telling us that he could stop and prevent criminals from terrorising our road even though his team of militias had no more legal authority to detain them than any of us; promising his state of the art alarms, linked up to his HQ, would be more effective than calling the police and then explaining that if one were to go off his team's response would be...to call the police.

The highlight of his performance was when he told us that he could offer an escort service (no not the kind you're thinking of) for anyone walking home in the dark, but that the escort would under no circumstances be allowed out of his patrol van, nor the 'client' allowed in, and would be absolutely forbidden to converse with the 'client' in any way shape or form. That's like a real escort service charging£1000 for a handshake. Incidentally, £1000 per year per person was the estimated cost given for providing the service for 60 people on one stretch of road.

Yet, there was still vocal support for the scheme amongst the audience as they shared the trauma they had suffered, such as the woman who had been pinned to the ground and mugged on her doorstep or the man who woke up in the middle of the night to find a burglar in his front room. Simply by recalling their own harrowing experiences to an already fearful audience, they did a much better of job of selling Mr Williams' service than Mr Williams himself.

Nevertheless, questions came from all corners of the floor, none of which were particularly well received or dealt with. The lowest moment for Williams was when he silenced the room after snapping at a "dissenter" that she should buy her son a stab jacket for his 16th birthday if she didn't like his service. Eventually I managed to get my question in and I asked him if he thought that a private security service for the few who could afford it would convince the police they were no longer needed and jeopardise the safety of those who couldn't. He laughed this off, mocking me for suggesting that the police had ever ventured down our way to begin with (they had and they still do if but very occasionally).

The point was still valid though. In fact he took several minutes to stress to the questioner before me that his team would alter their patrol routes, quite drastically if necessary, to avoid even passing households who weren't paying for their services.

Now the Metropolitan Police, quite understandably, allocate their resources based on local crime stats that identify trouble-spots. Fortunately for me, my area is no Gotham City; statistically, crime is low - or at least lower than the other surrounding areas - the very reason why so few police turn up to patrol it already. So, it does not seem unreasonable to fathom that they may stop bothering at all if they see street crime fall by a few percent. That's assuming the ridiculously expensive private patrol service actually works of course, for which there is no guarantee.

But what if it does work and keeps the rest of us none paying scroungers safe by association; what happens then? Mr Williams' best guess was that the crime that once plagued our street would move over to the next and make a new bunch of unsuspecting residents miserable and afraid. That didn't seem to bother him though, whereas at least even the most ardent supporters amongst the audience expressed some remorse about it (although understandably if forced to choose between the safety of their family and someone else's, it would be no contest). I couldn't get over the thought though that we wouldn't simply be profiting out of the hardship of our distant neighbours (if the criminals are over there, they're not over here) but that we would be indirectly causing it.

I'm still convinced there's a better way though: setting up a voluntary neighbourhood scheme for example, informed by the Met's own publicly available crime maps of each road in London; setting up a security committee comprised of members of local residents' associations which would liaise with the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel and the wardens of the local estates on a regular basis; and organised lobbying of the local council for better security systems for council housing and better street lighting. A large role for the council is particularly crucial, as we enter our first recession in almost two decades, if the causes of crime, crucial to any long term solution, are to be addressed too.

These are just ideas from off the top of my head. They could be rubbish, but I think they're at least a start. Bottom line is until we recognise that we each have a stake in each other's safety and that we must be prepared to take some responsibility for ensuring it by working together, rather than leaving it all to a skeletal police service or toothless vigilantes, the private security/public safety paradox will never be broken.