Councillor has phone snatched on council’s own doorstep
Southwark Liberal Democrat Councillor Irina Von Wiese has shared her experience of having her phone snatched outside the Labour-run council’s own headquarters on Tooley St.
Cllr Von Wiese, who lives in the local area, has explained how earlier in February she was waiting to catch the bus, and used her phone to check bus times. A young man wearing a balaclava on an electric bike then grabbed her phone and sped off. By the time she got home mere minutes later, tracking software showed the phone was already deep in south London.
Recounting the event, Irina explained that her immediate concern was for her own safety - “standing so close to the pavement on a main road, I easily could have been knocked into the path of a moving car or bus”.
The incident took place in the ward of London Bridge and West Bermondsey, which recorded 713 phone thefts in the last year – the second highest number in Southwark and one of the highest in London.
Both the Labour council and Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan have come under increasing fire for their failure to tackle crime in Southwark – with the Mayor responsible for closing multiple police front counters, and the council responsible for failing to secure a new base for the police in Rotherhithe, despite residents being promised they would have one as part of the Canada Water Masterplan.
The Mayor has also pursued cuts to the police across the council, with around 1,700 jobs axed as part of his programme.
The Liberal Democrats say they would double the number of council-employed community safety wardens, and are working with their Liberal Democrat colleagues in the Greater London Assembly and Parliament to fight for more resources for the police.
Commenting, Cllr Irina Von Wiese said:
“Phone snatching is endemic across London, but I know as a local councillor and now a victim myself how worried residents are about this. People have their whole lives on their phones – and even setting aside the cost of getting a new phone, the ordeal of losing such a vital device is genuinely distressing”.
Southwark Liberal Democrat Leader of the Opposition Cllr Victor Chamberlain said:
“Liberal Democrats have been calling out Labour for their failure to tackle crime in Southwark and across London for years – for a local councillor to have their phone stolen outside the headquarters of a Labour council just underlines how far they have failed.
The fact is that people have lost all faith in the ability of the authorities to solve these crimes – so the already too-high statistics are probably hiding an even wider problem.
Liberal Democrats want to see more bobbies on the beat and a return to real community policing, and for this Labour government and Mayor to give the police the resources they need to investigate these crimes and catch criminals.
Locally, we want to double our council-employed community safety wardens to provide that extra layer of safety and assurance that residents are desperate to see”.
