Forum Topic

British Transport Police Open Forum 1200-1400

My name is Mark Lawrie, the British Tranport Police Sergeant responsible for the London Underground stations from White City to Notting Hill Gate and from Hammersmith (H&C) to Edgware Road. If you have any questions, concerns or information that you would like us to be aware of, please post a message. Thanks

Mark Lawrie ● 5822d10 Comments

Could you do it simultaneously on several forums? Acton and Chiswick both livelier with more posters than this one so it might be sensible to reach out to them too.

Sara Nathan ● 5819d

The next online live forum will take place 11/06/2009 between 1200 and 1400. In the meantime if you have any questions please email me directly at mark.lawrie@btp.pnn.police.uk. Thank you

Mark Lawrie ● 5820d

Thank you Dan and Karen - we are working hard to increase our visibility on patch. With regards to the graffiti issue, we work closely with LU to ensure that the graffiti is removed at the earliest opportunity so that the effects and "prestige" of see the offender's tag running around the system is removed. This has resulted in a large reduction as the offender's efforts are seen to go unnoticed by his/her peers. Similarly, the LU staff are being given forensic awareness training so that our Scenes of Crime Officers are better able to collect valuable evidence which has resulted in an increase in graffiti offender detections.

Mark Lawrie ● 5820d

I concur with Karen - police visibility on public transport is a plus.I am also noticing the war against brainless graffiti seems to be winning.

Dan Filson ● 5821d

Mark, it's very good to know you are out ther looking in here, and that we have a contact where our concerns on transport will be noted

Vivienne James ● 5821d

I have to bring the forum to a close now as I have other commitments, but thank you to those who responded and during the June forum I will give advance notice to people of its date/time. Regards, Mark.

Mark Lawrie ● 5821d

Thank you for your comments Karen. Unfortunately in the current climate of belt-tightening, it was decided that we would see if this was an acceptable platform to engage with the community before money was spent on advertising it with leaflets etc and instead just publicised this through the LU's internal staff newsletter (which is free). Despite the low response, I am happy that this would prove effective and will ask my senior officers for extra support next month.

Mark Lawrie ● 5821d

Some publicity for this might have been a good idea to get more response.On a positive note I have found public transport in general much safer to use over the last year, so thanks are in order.

Karen Cooper ● 5821d

In short: Yes, they have committed an offence. Although this has been reported to Oyster, it is important that it is also reported to the Police on 0800 40 50 40 so that we can make all possible lines of investigation. We pride ourselves on having a thorough and dedicated team of enquiries officers who are available to deal with crimes such as this.

Mark Lawrie ● 5822d

Mark, my wife mislaid a pay as you go Oyster card recently. It was picked up by somebody and they continued to use it and as it was on auto top up we didn't realise until the notification came through at which point we stopped it. Has the person using the card committed an offence and is it something you would investigate? The amount of credit they used was less than £10. We reported the loss to Oyster.

Andy Jones ● 5822d