One of the police teams in the Finsbury Park area this week

A CRACKDOWN on drugs has been launched by the police amid concerns from residents over dealing in the streets.

Officers declared this week that they will be conducting ‘weeks of action’ in Finsbury Park where they will target crimes related to drugs and drug dealing.

They said they were aware that breaking up one drug network may seem like a success, but there was always a danger of another quickly popping up to fill the void.

The operation, run by the borough’s safer neighbourhoods team, means an increased police presence on the streets. They have spent the last seven days in both plain clothes and uniform targetting the drug market – and the anti-social behaviour which stems from it.

“A lot of the crimes around Finsbury Park are drug related,” said Police Constable Javid Ahmed, who is leading these weeks of action with the Safer Neighbourhoods team.

“Drug related crime covers a lot of things like drug dealing, drug usage, theft – like shoplifting, burglaries […] We’re also tackling anti-social behaviour, and making sure communities see us, like the mosques, the church, the local businesses – just so they know we’re out, which we are anyway.”

He added: “We’ve also got some covert patrols ongoing, so plain clothes officers, who just walk, or sometimes drive, around as normal identifying issues and dealing with them.”

PC Ahmed said these weeks were “groundwork policing,” adding “any information that we do gather that could lead higher up the food chain, we’ll pass that information onto other departments who will look into it and try and take these networks of drug dealing down.”

PC Ahmed said that his team has removed some of these networks but are aware that “sooner or later, another pops up.”

He also insisited that police are taking a hardline stance on these crimes.

“We’ve arrested many people. We’ve ended up deporting some that were illegally in the country committing crime,” he said.

“As soon as they’re gone there will be new faces filling up the gap.”
PC Ahmed argued that these weeks of action prevent crime from happening.

“It massively deters crime when there’s police visibility,” he said. “Our last operation showed that there was a massive decrease around Finsbury Park station and Blackstock Road when there was police there. We had very few calls from members of the public, and no incidents.

“We had members of the public, businesses especially, coming up and thanking us for that whole week because we had a positive impact. I had a business come up and say to us that he had an increase in business.”

He said that by virtue of where Finsbury Park is – falling between Islington, Haringey, and Hackney – it makes it “easier” for criminals to commit these offences.

“There’s a massive footfall of people and it’s a transportation hub. That makes it easier, or a good location, to commit certain types of crime,” he said. “It also crosses borders with Hackney and Haringey, and the British Transport Police are here as well, so it can be quite difficult trying to get everyone on the same page.

“We might have someone committing a number of crimes, and we’ll identify this person or this pattern, and then he’s gone, and he might just be doing the same thing in Haringey, which can make it difficult.”

Consequently, officers are taking a tri-borough approach to policing in the area and have increased communication between the teams.