(Picture shows Bernard with Annie Prescott, St Mary’s, also a trained Street Pastor.)
What is a Street Pastor, asks Bernard Aarons St Luke’s? A Street Pastor is a Christian who may be a church leader/minister or member of the congregation who shares a concern for society. The main role of the Street Pastor is to make themselves available to care, to listen, to support and to help people, especially young people, by going out on the streets from 10pm to the early hours. They go out either on Friday nights or Saturday nights once a month.
There are 33 London Boroughs and so far Street Pastors can be found in 22 of them, as well as in 24 towns and cities. As well as London, they are in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Southend, Wrexham, Romford, plus other countries such as Antigua and Barbuda.
Places that have Street Pastors report that Crime is reduced.
- In Lewisham there was a 30% reduction in crime within the first 13 weeks.
- In Camberwell there was a reduction of 95%.
- In Peckham the reduction was 74%.
Street Pastors walk the streets in groups of, say, four people and talk to whoever they meet: people at bus stops, shopkeepers, people outside pubs, in night clubs. When asked who you are and why you are there you say that you want people to feel safe. Street Pastors are easily recognisable by their uniform which helps those they meet to feel the pastors can be trusted. If people you meet want to pray, you pray with them and if they want you to pray for them later on you do so when you get back to base.
We ask the police where they want us to walk and the police support us. When we go out we ring the police who give us a number which is logged on their computer and we let them know where we are going. When we finish working we ring the police again giving the number and they log this information. If we were to get into any trouble, we can ring the police and they would send out support. Street Pastors are not Police and have no powers of arrest or anything like that. In Romford the Street Pastors have been given a police phone and the local MP has joined them on patrol. We also know that Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London, supports the initiative.
Ten of us have been trained and we are in the process of organising a management committee as we hope to start a group in Waltham Forest as soon as possible. At the moment, until the local group starts, we have to go out in Hackney or Romford.
If you are interested in becoming a Street Pastor you must first go on the training course, which runs over 12 Saturdays and these are in blocks of 4 over a period of 5 months. There are two courses per year and any Saturday you miss you have to take again on the next course. The next course starts in September and costs £300. You also get a uniform and it is hoped that your church will contribute towards your training. Street Pastors have to be 18years old or over and have been a committed Christian for over 1 year.
If you want to know more please contact me. We need more people so that we can have teams who go out onto the streets of Waltham Forest every Friday and Saturday night.
Bernard Aarons
LONDON MAYOR PRAISES STREET PASTORS
Boris Johnson, the new London Mayor, has praised the groups of volunteer Christian ‘street pastors’ who now offer support to late night revellers in 70 areas of the country. Mr Johnson spoke of the ‘extraordinary and inspiring movement’ which he sees playing an important role in reducing street crime. Previously, Conservative Party leader David Cameron lauded the ‘absolutely fantastic job the street pastors are doing’ in complementing the work of police in tackling antisocial behaviour. Backing has also come from police, who are freed up to concentrate on more serious incidents. Begun in Brixton in 2003, the movement has spread rapidly to other cities, towns and suburbs. Teams take to the streets on Friday and Saturday nights to help worse-for-wear and vulnerable club-goers. Their services range from having a chat to giving flip flops to revellers stumbling in their high heels and issuing night-bus timetables to help people get home.
This article was circulated in the Bible Society’s e-newsletter and was taken from an article in the Sunday Telegraph, published 1 June.
Return to Index for the Parish of Walthamstow Magazine, July/August 2008
