This morning I read, utterly aghast, about the police inWanstead and Snaresbrook in East London offering locals an escort service from cash machines to their homes.
I’ve been banging on about the safety issues surround cash handling and carrying for a while, in fact my recent piece in the Telegraph included a highlighted snippet quoting me as saying, “mugging me is pointless”. Whilst, although I do agree I am less of a target than some, my lack of cash does not rule me out of the running for a good mugging – far from it. I still have phones and gift cards and often a camera of some sort or another.
None the less, whatever I choose to carry on my person is my own personal decision and, before leaving the house, I will apply the same level of foresight as to where I am going and at what time to what I carry about with me.
I won’t take my DSLR for a stroll around the nearest estate after sunset, nor will sit using my laptop on a quiet bus at any time of the day – it is just logical to presume I stand a good chance of not coming home with my possessions in either case and, whilst it is utterly depressing that our communities harbour such a need for caution and inhibition, it is the community I choose to live in for all its benefits and I am begrudgingly OK with the situation.
I would not, for example, expect a cop to make sure I got home in one piece if I had chosen to go out with my camera.
Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Understanding that some people use only cash to live their lives still, I am not questioning the need for better safety surrounding cash points and known trouble spots; but are personal police escorts necessary? Could the money spent on walking vulnerable people home not be spent more effectively on tackling petty violent crime? On educating the more stubborn of our communities about the dangers and perils of predominantly using cash over the security of card transactions and carrying pieces of plastic with nominal actual value?
Maybe this campaign will do exactly that! Maybe those that suffer the laboriousness of booking a police escort or witness the paid effort to maintain the service will put 2 + 2 together and turn to cards all by themselves!
