thebishop

Good day East Dulwich! Just a friendly reminder that we host our glorious pub quiz at the Bishop from 7pm every Sunday... Looking forward to seeing some of you there.

Hi Stephanie / All, As with every pub / area where the public can gather, we do occasionally find ourselves targeted by bag thieves. We have managed to foil and catch countless number of these criminals over the years, including some resulting in arrests, and keep in regular communication with all of our pub neighbours as and when we identify there to be a problem in the area. Unfortunately, bag thieves and pickpockets will always be on the lookout for easy targets in busy venues, and we can?t catch or stop them all ourselves ? we wish we could. On this evening in question, the manager of the actress notified the manager on duty of the Bishop that he had just been alerted there was a bag thief in the area (amongst other venues notified). Unfortunately this information came too late, as your bag in the Bishop had already been taken. After offering the pub phone to call the Police, the manager on Duty visited the EDT to look around, and see if they had seen them etc (finding out they had also been stolen from). As mentioned when he phoned you the next day, unfortunately the police had not been in touch, but we were happy that he could direct you to Neil at the Actress, who we know had managed to get a good shot of them. We have CCTV recording most areas of the pub, and unfortunately, viewing it on our system in this instance it is difficult to pick out detail of the incident. We will continue to do everything that we can to try and help the police, and you are welcome to come back to watch through the CCTV with us again to try and see any more clues. As mentioned, we do think that we have an image of the couple, which we caught at the Actress. We cannot tweet this out, or show it publicly, as CCTV rules do not allow us to (although it may well have been sent out from someone's personal account..). This has been shown to the police, who did visit the actress concerning this couple, and are sending in one of their technicians to take it away. To the best of our knowledge the police are aware of the linking of these incidents, but cannot say why they have chosen not to request info / pics from the Bishop. It is very difficult to be able to cover every inch of the premises at every angle. Some professional bag thieves know this, and actively try and work around cameras. We will look again, as we regularly do at our equipment to ensure it is doing the job it is there for. If someone does have their property stolen, even with a perfect image, then unfortunately we have very limited powers in what we can do, short of barring them / notifying the police if we see them again / warning other premises nearby. It falls to the police to decide if they wish to investigate bag thieves, which they have on occasion (particularly when we caught one trying to steal from a police Christmas party), but sometimes they are obviously too busy. In every case, we locate all of the images which we have, ready to burn a copy for the police?s use from our dedicated hard drive, along with a report which we prepare with timings and as much detail of the incident as we can. The police also have the power to come in and seize the hard drive from the CCTV system for them to review with their own extremely powerful software for extracting and tidying up images to view. We store all of our CCTV images for 31 days, as it constitutes an offence for us to not do so. Whilst we will continue to do everything that we can to prevent these incidents from occurring, we would implore everyone to keep a close eye on their possessions when in any public space. Bags on backs of, or poking out from under chairs make easy pickings for opportunists, not all of whom stick out like a sore thumb. Whilst we have mentioned some of these incidents here, and abhor the situation, it must be said that it is a relatively rare problem in the area. If you are in the City or the West end, then these are nightly occurrences. As in this situation, it often happens when professional thieves, come in to the area, work fast moving between local venues, and then get out again just as quickly. Being able to notify the premises you are in as soon as possible when you have noticed the item missing assists us in telling other venues, and hopefully being able to catch them in the act elsewhere, and have your property returned after any resulting arrest. Phil Sutton Area Manager

Morning all, I would like to thank UnderhillOliver and felt-tip for their observations. DJKillaQueen is completely right with her comments regarding the necessity to have security personnel as a part of our licensing. During these past 5 and a half years, we have worked extremely dilligently to try and eradicate certain 'groups' that have been mentioned already on this thread, and on the most part, with relative success. I can assure you that I take these concerns very seriously, shall be monitoring this situation very closely. The security staff have a pretty small brief with regards to their responsibilities, so there is absolutely no excuse for standards being dropped. If anybody else has any further concerns, please feel free to contact me. Many thanks, Neil