Cyclists who ride modified electric bicycles, “capable of going 50mph”, particularly around Peckham Rye, will be targeted, according to Southwark’s new neighbourhood superintendent.
In an interview with this paper, Superintendent Shaz Shah said anti-social drug dealing, phone snatching and burglaries were also key priorities.
He is one of London’s twenty new Local Neighbourhood Superintendents employed by Mark Rowley to strengthen neighbourhood policing.
The move – along with the addition of 500 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) by the end of 2023 – responds to concerns that petty crime goes unaddressed.
Superintendent Shah’s job is to work with Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs), Southwark Council and local organisations to identify local issues and report them back to Scotland Yard.
Asked to outline his priorities, he said: “I always go back to the e-bike one because it’s not a big hitter like a robbery. But actually, it’s something that’s really impacting end-users.”
Residents often complain that electric bicycles, modified to go up to 50mph using kits available online, are menacing pedestrians.
“That impacts people using Peckham High Street. It just makes it a place they’re not wanting to be because it’s not safe,” he said.
Converted bikes are also linked to fires as with Sofia Duarte, the 21-year-old killed in an Old Kent Road fire in May.
Superintendent Shah said the Rye Lane team would conduct operations to seize illegal e-bikes on a quarterly basis.
During an operation on Rye Lane in May, officers seized two e-bikes.
But he added that officers had “autonomy” to decide whether to criminalise those caught. He said education was sometimes the best option to avoid punishing people “for doing something they didn’t realise they were doing wrong”.
He also said phone-snatching was a priority after it was revealed that Southwark was the third most menaced borough in London with 5,690 incidents in 2023.
DSI Shah said “intelligence-led models” were identifying the hot spots but people should be “savvy” about having their phones out in public.
Anecdotally, Canada Water is often cited as a hotspot but Shah said: “It’s…nowhere near as [much of] an issue as it would be in… Bankside and London Bridge and into Waterloo.”
Asked to give an example where neighbourhood teams have quickly responded to the community’s concerns, he said they’d recently kicked out a drug dealer who was ‘cuckooing’ a vulnerable adult.
This is where dealers take over somebody’s home and use it as a base for drug dealing.
500 PCSOs will hit London’s streets by December 2023 – officers who don’t have arrest powers but are “the eyes and ears of the community” tackling low level crime.
Asked if 500 was enough, he said: “I think 500 is a very good starting point and I think that’s a brave decision by the commissioner to say we definitely need this.”
