“Word’s got out. There’s a gap in West Putney. So you’re gonna get from all over, trying to take over.”
PC Ben Walters told a West Putney ward panel at Granard Primary School on 10 March that the arrest and imprisonment of a local drug dealer wasn’t going to be the end of the issue. A month later, on 9 April, police arrested a man at Innes Gardens, the same patch he was talking about.
The Metropolitan Police disclosed the arrest yesterday in a MetEngage alert signed by PCSO Kordian Wojtowicz. Officers spotted two mopeds, chased a man on foot as he tried to conceal himself behind a building, and arrested him on suspicion of possession with intent to supply a Class B drug. Around 30 snap bags of cannabis and about £2,200 in cash were seized.
The patch itself is the reason the alert matters. At the March ward panel, Walters had explained how the West Putney Safer Neighbourhood Team built its earlier Innes Gardens case: months of quiet intelligence work, deliberate non-enforcement of parking around the site, and residents phoning in what they were seeing. That operation ended with a suspect arrested on 10 counts of drug supply and three firearms offences, and remanded in custody.
What the ward panel set up
At the panel itself, a resident described watching five or six unfamiliar men gather behind the shops at nearby Tildesley Road the night before, with another arriving on an e-bike and a tinted-window car pulling up. She said it didn’t look right. Walters agreed. “Your intelligence that we get in meetings is crucial to us to be able to actually tackle things,” he told her. “You’re the reason we were able to go out and know where to go.”
He then offered the prediction that now reads differently. The man already in custody, he said, had been “a major player.” His absence from the patch would not last. Rivals would try to fill it.
The 9 April arrest took place at the same location. The scale was not the same. This month’s seizure is a Class B case; the earlier operation ran to Class A dealing and firearms. Whether the arrested man is connected to the original network, or whether he represents the rival pattern Walters described, has not been officially established. The West Putney SNT was asked. The team had not answered before publication.
What hasn’t changed
The prediction was one half of the March meeting. The other half was the picture PC Kevin Wakefield, also of the West Putney team, gave of the same ward. “I would have said it’s actually safe,” he said. That was at the meeting where Metropolitan Police figures, presented by the borough’s violence reduction lead, showed violent crime in West Putney had risen 63% year-on-year, and 35% over 12 months, while Wandsworth as a whole rose 12% and Putney 15%.
The SNT cannot sub-categorise that data. Officers told residents in March that they are only given figures for the ward’s three agreed priorities; everything else, including whether the violence increase is driven by domestic abuse, has to be sought by members of the public themselves. That question, raised in March, has not been answered.
A visibly active ward
The Innes Gardens alert is PCSO Wojtowicz’s second MetEngage message in three days. The first, on 18 April, warned of a burglary pattern in West Putney and urged residents to review their home security. At the March panel, the SNT reported it was at its full strength of 14 officers for the first time in over a year.
The next West Putney ward panel is on Tuesday 30 June, 6:30pm, at Granard Primary School. Residents can raise intelligence directly with the team by emailing WestPutney@contact.metengage.co.uk or calling 0208 785 8857. Suspicious activity can be reported on 101, or 999 in an emergency. MetEngage sign-up is at metengage.co.uk.
The June panel is where the open questions can be tested: whether the rival pattern the SNT predicted has in fact filled the patch, whether the 9 April arrest stopped it or is part of it, and whether the violence data picture has come any closer into focus.
