Metropolitan Police officers have urged the community to act as their “eyes and ears” to help combat crime and reduce the risk of terror attacks.

They spoke at a Harrow Interfaith meeting on Thursday (May 2), alongside security workers and Harrow Council representatives, about community safety in the borough.

As well as offering tips on how to prevent crime, they encouraged the public to report as many incidents as possible to help increase police success rates.

“You are our eyes and ears,” said Inspector Tanya Sprunks, who is responsible for Harrow neighbourhoods.

“As much as we’d like to be, we can’t be on every street corner. But it’s through your reports that we are able to build our intelligence.”

Harrow, like much of London, has experienced multiple violent incidents this year but Insp Sprunks gave assurances that police are doing “everything they can” to keep people “as safe as possible”.

The meeting was inspired by two burglaries at Hindu temples in the region around Diwali in November.

And, following deadly terror attacks at places of worship in New Zealand and Sri Lanka in recent months, Harrow Interfaith wanted to highlight the importance of protecting faith communities and religious buildings.

Police officers gave advice on how to spot potential threats – such as people acting suspiciously – and reiterated the ‘run, hide, tell’ mantra in response to attacks.

They explained that, in 2017 – a year with several high-profile terrorist attacks – 33,000 pieces of information were reported to units across the country, with one in five leading to action.

This dropped significantly in 2018 as there were no significant incidents, but they urged people not to get complacent, noting that a “tiny bit of info could stop a terrorist”.

Local representatives from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that protects Jewish communities in the UK, emphasised this point.

They urged people to take particular caution around sites of worship and faith schools and encouraged people to report all potential hate crimes to the police.

A spokesman for CST said: “We look at the far-right and how it has grown in the last few years and it does concern us.

“It’s really important that everyone takes responsibility to report hate crime. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, whatever – attacks on these communities are hate crimes.”