23
Mar
2015
By Calvin at 13:20 GMT, 9 years ago
Yesterday I said goodbye to friends who have been staying with us since last Thursday. We had a great time and one of the highlights for them was a trip to the Camden Town markets. This is one of our favourite places to visit in London and my wife and I usually manage at least a dozen trips each year.
Overall it’s a very safe place to be, but you’ve got to keep your wits about you!
From March to October and around Xmas the place gets rammed, especially at weekends when Camden Town Station is so busy that you can only use the station to alight – not get back on (you’ve got to go to either Mornington Crescent or Chalk Farm to get home).
The thing about busy places like this, which attract millions of visitors each year, is that large crowds often provide the ideal opportunity for theft. In the last 12 months in a stretch of road north from Camden Town Station up to and including all the markets the police recorded 261 thefts from the person and 29 robberies*. It seems like a lot, but when you consider how many tens of thousands of people are visiting the area your chances of becoming a victim are very low indeed.
Saying this isn’t much consolation for the poor victims of course, but we should use this data to reinforce the need to take our own personal security seriously.
Like any busy place that is frequented by pickpockets and robbers there will be hotspots where this type of crime is more likely to take place. Even in Camden Town where the pavements are often very slow going because of the crowds there are particular places where extra care should be taken. For example, outside the station exit visitors will often gather waiting for their group to reassemble and to read their maps and there’s a market just up on the right where the aisles between the stalls are just four or five feet wide and filled with people. This crowding and associated bumping into each other, which can’t be avoided, presents the ideal opportunity for ‘theft from the person’.
So, if you’re planning a visit to a busy, crowded place soon do think about what you might do to make yourself less of a target.
Perhaps a bum-bag instead of a handbag or wallet; leave off the expensive jewellery for the day, go onto Google Street View and learn your route to the destination before setting off so you don’t have to stop and check a map. And gents; please don’t carry your wallet in the back pocket for all to see (There was one on the up escalator at the station on Saturday doing just that – and it was half way out of his pocket with plenty of banknotes on show!)
Statistics show us that your chances of becoming a victim of these types of theft are actually very low, but you can do things to make them almost zero. You know it makes sense!
Keep ‘em peeled.
Camden Market http://www.camdenmarket.com/
Camden Markets http://www.camdenlock.net/
There’s lots of advice about personal security on this site starting here: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/robbery-and-theft-risk/661/christmas-shopping-tips/
*Data from Police.uk. Please note that, like all crime types, there is an element of underreporting of crime. Also, the data on Police.uk is not accurately plotted (data protection requirement), but is instead aligned to particular sections of the street or a market area. The two hotspots I mentioned above were known to me personally when I worked there in crime prevention. Hotspots do change location from time to time.
