Greater London is currently divided into 12 BCU’s for policing purposes. Each BCU containes two boroughs.
As you can see from the picture, Tower Hamlets is within Central East (CE) BCU, sharing a borough Commander with Hackney.
Our current Borough Commander is Mr James Conway.
Whilst there was discussion at the time when Borough policing became shared with 2 boroughs, as becoming less good, we now have the situation arising, that our Borough Commander has to further stretch his work load to also be responsible for front line policing for the whole of Greater London’s twelve BCUs.
Tower Hamlets has become the borough with the highest crime rate in East London for June, overtaking Newham, our Borough Commander is unable to direct his sole attention to policing his BCU but he also has to look after front line policing for all 12 BCU’s. see source | Independent | Newham Recorder | Stats |
Data distributed by two publishers is contradictive.
Crime Score Card
places Tower Hamlets into the top 20 safest boroughs in London, which has 32 boroughs, see stats
Independent
The ten boroughs with the highest levels of crime in London:
- Westminster – 41,639
- Camden – 20,333
- Newham – 19,789
- Southwark – 19,698
- Lambeth – 18,578
- Tower Hamlets 17,585
- Croydon – 16,965
- Ealing – 15,994
- Brent – 15.907
Newham Recorder
Tower Hamlets recorded its highest number of offences in a month this year with 3,343 reported cases in June.
This was up 7.6 per cent from May.
Tower Hamlets displaced Newham which had the highest crime count for each of the previous five months.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsCommander Conway is responsible for @MPSTowerHam and @MPSHackney – his valuable time is really needed in our borough. @metpoliceuk should appoint a less busy person for media interviews. https://t.co/6LNn53wo64
— Tower Hamlets Crime Watch (@th_crime_watch) July 11, 2025
Where is front-line policing?
During the recent ASB awareness week events, we saw more Tower Hamlets Enforcement Officers and Task Force officers, paid for by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, attending stalls than actual Met Police paid officers.
It is worrying that the highest crime rate borough is also the borough where the Council pays for the most police officers.
ASB Awareness Week 2023
Compare this to the picture of ASB Awareness week in 2025, which was mainly hosted and organised by Tower Hamlets Council and THEO officers.
ASB Awareness week 2025
The events I attended, only the Whitechapel stall has 2 PCO officers with property marking kits, all others where staffed by THEO officers.
Whilst Tower Hamlets Police makes short engagement sessions available (almost) daily, those events are strictly timed and unsuitable for most who work or have commitments.
The new Met Engage seems to be a soother for police contact because it seems to want to replace actual contact with local police. We get the names of local officers displayed on the site, but will we ever see them?
They collect surveys from people who have never had to actually verify who they are and where they live.
Tower Hamlets Crime Watch 
You must be logged in to post a comment.