HARROW'S top police officer has been made an OBE for his services to the community in the Queen's birthday honours list.
On hearing about the award, Chief Superintendent Dal Babu, who took over as Harrow's borough commander last year, dedicated the honour to his late parents.
He said: "I'm extremely grateful and humbled to receive this award, which I believe has only been possible thanks to the support of my police colleagues, the community and my family.
"My one sadness is that my mother and father, who were the most inspirational and remarkable people I have ever known, are not alive today to share this moment with me personally."
Mr Babu, who is one of 10 children to Indian immigrants, joined the service in 1983 and fulfilled a number of different roles in Camden, Enfield and Tower Hamlets until, in 2009, he was promoted to his current rank in Harrow.
He has been involved in breaking new ground in devising policies around social cohesion with the Muslim communities and young people and in 1999, while working as an inspector in Camden, he brought together groups of Asian and white youths who, following the murder of a teenager in 1994, had been constantly fighting.
He broke with tradition and brought together the two opposing groups and arranged a series of meetings.
He also raised funds to take the groups to Belfast in July 1999 to meet young Catholic and Protestant people.
This project had a notable effect on youth disorder and resulted in crime among them dropping from 177 incidents between February 1999 and July 1999 to just four incidents in August 1999.
Since then he has been seconded to the Commission for Racial Equality, during which time he managed the chairman's flagship project - Safe
Communities Initiative and he devised a project working with the Football Association and local communities in Wrexham, Islington and Southampton, for which he organised seminars in football grounds and drew in young people to discuss how to improve social cohesion.
More recently, he has continued to make a huge contribution to improving Muslim and police relationships following 9/11 and 7/7 and started discussions with police colleagues around the country to set up the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP).
Despite his tireless work during the past three decades he has no intention to stop just yet.
He added: "The Metropolitan Police Service has changed in a very positive way in the last 26 years and I have benefited from some remarkable opportunities to work with some of the most able and talented people around.
"I look forward to continuing to serve our communities and the Metropolitan Police Service."
