Residents and councillors hit back at Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and Kingston Met for the lack of police visibility.

Locals voiced their complaints of a disappearing police force at a Community Engagement event at the Guildhall on Monday 7 August.

Cllr Farshid Sadr-Hashemi spoke of the "elephant in the room" and criticised the Met for abstracting (removing officers from their patches) as ring-fencing officers has disappeared.

Sir Mark said he aims to form a policy, so neighbourhood officers are not extracted more than so many days a year.

Sir Mark stated: "One of the things we have not done desperately well is resource management.

"We've had five or six hundred officers every day dealing with Just Stop Oil. Many of you are commuters and you don't want your day to be trashed by them, so you want use to deal with it but it's actually quite hard."

Figures from June 2023 show almost 13,770 officers have been redirected from local policing priorities to Just Stop Oil.

Just Stop Oil has been a significant pull on the Met's resources, costing the force £7.7m in the last 13 weeks alone.

Sir Mark added: "When big organisation like this ties itself in knots and gets it wrong, it's not something I can untie overnight."

Sir Mark Rowley covering the Met's new polcing plan. (Photo: Emily Dalton)

However, as Baroness Casey's damning review on the Met outlined the abstraction of local police forces is a systemic issue. In her report she said: "London no longer has a functioning neighbourhood policing service. Far from being ring-fenced as promised in the [2018] reorganisation, it has become a resource for 15 backfilling other services like Response."

Sir Mark said: "We've lost sight of one key principle which is every police officer should be within a 20-minute walk of their patch.

"In a bit more than 10% of London's wards that is currently not the case."

There are approximately 1,368 fewer police officers from July 2023 compared to July 2010. However, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has promised to fund 500 additional police officers through tax.

Police in Command for Kingston, Richmond, Wandsworth and Merton, Claire Helland also claimed she would get 91 more officers on her basic command unit (BCU) by October.

Ms Coleen, a resident, heckled Sir Mark on the street presence of officers during the Q&A, stating: "You don't see them."

She expressed her grievances that she wanted greater contact with the force. She said she would like: "a phone booth or an email address you can register or ring…no one comes back to you."

Resident Ms Sonhae Sohn expressed concerns about anti-social behaviour in her New Malden neighbourhood. She cited her friend's grandson being mugged and graffiti in the area. Ms Sohn expressed the importance of the police uniforms in making young people aware of their presence in the neighbourhood.

Kinsgton police officers outside the Guildhall. (Photo: Emily Dalton)

Isobel, speaking on behalf of John Lewis & Partners asked how retail crime and violence fitted in the Met's priorities.

She said: "I've got partners in John Lewis Kingston, Waitrose Richmond and Wandsworth who are scared to come into work because of the impact of crime in their shops.

"The perception that it is not safe to deal with these offenders and they don't have confidence in the police that you're going to deal with them robustly."

In response, Kingston Superintendent Josh Laughton spoke of an app called Auror which local shops can use to share data with the police to "crack down on these people and stop them from going shop to shop."

Supt Laughton also announced the launch of a Kingston Town working group which he said is about to have its first meeting. A working group addresses specific subjects which benefit from more in-depth work than a general committee. They are not decision-making bodies but make recommendations based on its discussions.

Supt Laughton added: "Especially coming into the summer months when we know it is busy in the town centre…the police, the local council and Kingston First will get into a room together every two weeks and address issues...We [won't] leave that meeting until we have some practical things that can benefit the community."

The working group seems a tad late to the game as September is fast-approaching and summer feels like it is nearly over. Despite the public not being invited to engage, the working group proposes tangible solutions to the community as issues arise on a fortnightly basis.

Supt Laughton emphasised he wanted the event to ensure "policing is done for [the community] and not to [the community]". He cited improvements Kingston police has made such as a 70% reduction in catalytic converter theft over nine months, reducing antisocial behaviour through new council legislation, and creating a large survey for Cambridge Road Estate residents on how it can improve quality of community policing.

Another community engagement event is proposed to be in three months' time so MPS Kingston can evaluate the progress it has made with the public.