Client: London’s leading late-night venue operator
Project: Analysis of Crime Hotspots in London’s West End
What were MAKE asked to do?
Rightly the police focus on problem licensed venues. However, in the West End of London our client, one of the best multi-site operators of late night venues in London, or indeed globally, felt that they were being unfairly targeted by the police, often for minor crimes which in many cases would have been mistakenly recorded by officers themselves or even fraudulently reported by members of the public (e.g. mobile phone theft for insurance purposes).
The Metropolitan Police had been claiming (and in our view on very flimsy evidence) that our client was one of the main sources of reported incidents in London’s night-time economy. The client wanted some context about crime levels in the part of London’s West End in which it operated its venues and were they indeed a problem? They didn’t think so.
How did MAKE do it?
We sought police data to our specification. They declined. We issued a Freedom of Information request. We got some data… in the end! We combined this with publically searchable ‘big data’ that the Metropolitan Police themselves had placed on-line.
We used a mixture of GIS mapping and old fashioned site observations to prove, categorically, that none of our client’s venues were anywhere near the top of the list of police priorities in London, in complete dismissal of police claims. Indeed, it turned out that Harrods was considerably higher up our crime hotspot mapping list than any of our client’s venues. This made police assertions laughable.
We demonstrated where the police should be focusing their resources, which was malls such as Westfield, Oxford Street (with huge levels of shoplifting and other low level crime), public spaces such as around St Martin’s in the Field and stations such as Charring Cross and Liverpool Street. Interestingly we identified St Thomas’ Hospital as a high crime hot spot, which was neither on the police radar nor that of Lambeth council. There were some rogue late night venues that we identified. We made sure that the police knew they were not our client.
What happened next?
We used our data to produce a report showing where the police should be focusing their efforts. This was used by the client to both resist unreasonable police enforcement activity (basically they had hugely over claimed and needed to go into retreat). This allowed our client breathing space to continue running its business to a high standard without harassment. It was also the first time anybody had publicly revealed London’s top crime hotspots.
What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?
We worked around the police’s obfuscation and deliberate attempts to shrug us off the scent! We thought laterally and used the police’s own public data to build a case against their victimisation of a great business.