A Labour councillor has made the astonishing claim that the police should not be involved in preventing people stealing petrol.

Cllr Sue Fennimore represents Addison Ward and is the “Cabinet Member for Social Inclusion”. In practice her brief means that she is the senior Labour councillor with responsibility for liasing with the local police.

Yet at a council meeting last night she made the most astonishing comments – in a prepared speech (you can listen to it here around 26 minutes in).

Cllr Fennimore said:

“We want these Hammersmith and Fulham police officers to cut serious crime. I was not impressed to discover that just over two years we had a police officer stationed on the forecourt of a BP petrol station.

“There had been a spate of people driving off and not paying for petrol and that had caused the crime figures to shoot up. Indeed stealing petrol is a criminal offence and should be confronted. But a police officer called off the front line and stationed on a petrol forecourt is hardly the smartest use of police resources.

“So we expect all police officers on Hammersmith and Fulham Council funds to concentrate on reducing serious crime.”

If she doesn’t think the police should be involved in stopping people stealing petrol then who should do the job of ensuring it is “confronted”? Should garage owners become vigilantes? If stealing petrol is a trivial rather “serious” crime what about shop lifting? Or robbery? Or burglary? If you are running a garage being targeted by thieves then the forecourt IS the front line.

Since Cllr Fennimore is grandly determined to interfere in operational policing then perhaps she will let us know he full list of crimes she is demanding the police ignore.