When we reported this week that violence in West Putney had halved (a good news story, given what had been an unexplained increase in the ward), it turned out we were reporting on a dip, not a fall.
At the ward’s Met police panel meeting on Tuesday night, the chair of the Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT), Lee Roberts, presented the latest figures: violence had shot back up again. It was the worst it had been in years, Roberts pointed out: 301 incidents against 210 the year before, up 43% on last year. West Putney is not only Putney’s most violent ward, the figures show, but its rise in violence is the sharpest anywhere in Wandsworth.
At the last meeting, in March, the same question was put to the local police team: what was behind the rise? They said they could not explain it, but would find out and report back. The same question was asked again on Tuesday night: why is violence so high in West Putney, and what’s driving it? The answer caught the room by surprise.
“You tell me,” said PC Ben Walters, the police lead for the ward. Chair Roberts was taken aback. Things did not get better.
Violence against the person in West Putney: 267 incidents in 2023 to 2024, 210 incidents in 2024 to 2025, and 301 incidents in 2025 to 2026.
One resident had come to the meeting with a specific purpose. Earlier that day, she had been gardening when a man collapsed on the public walkway in front of her, so drunk he could not stand. She wanted to know the right response, and wondered if PC Walters could have a word with the express supermarket opposite about selling more wine to a man they already knew as a regular. She was also surprised by the answer.
“There’s no point,” Walters said. “If you tell them they can’t purchase it here, they’ll just take it anyway.”
The point of an SNT meeting is for residents to share information and ask questions directly of their local copper. Another resident complained about having tried to report multiple crimes and not received a response: who should she be contacting to make sure something happened?
“Crime Stoppers,” PC Walters responded. “It’s anonymous.” Does a report to Crime Stopper actually reach his team, she followed up. “Yeah, it does,” Walters said.
He was asked again about the violence stats. Could he do a fuller analysis to find out what was going on. “No, without checking all the stats and going through every single crime before, but that would take weeks to do.” Could analytics tools speed up the weeks it takes to break the figures down by hand? “I don’t like AI,” Walters said. “I prefer humans.” What if residents provided a set of questions that could be taken away and responded to at the next meeting? “Great,” he said. “I can divert them to the right people.”
Aside the increase in violence, what explained the rises in drugs and violence? This time, Walters had an answer: “We caught more people, and we had a good summer.” There had been, he said, “a dynamic change in the team. Officers were pushed to prioritise other things before. We go out hunting more now, so we catch more people.”
Could the panel’s chair, or a ward councillor, see a breakdown of the crime data behind the figures? “No.” Officers cannot share names or addresses, so there is no route for a resident or councillor to see it directly. Our March story established the same blind spot.
Drugs offences in the ward have more than doubled on last year. What does “drugs” as a reported category actually cover? “Could be anything from someone in a bush smoking a joint, to county lines,” Walters said. Could antisocial behaviour reports escalate into something more serious? “It depends,” he said, without settling on when. An animal welfare concern? “We don’t do that.” Domestic violence? “We don’t deal with that.”
“I’ve got to go,” PC Walters told the room. “I’ve got someone in custody and I need to book them.”
