Encouraging words Conal, I hope the sentiment is shared by many. Nonetheless it is true that we need to be vigilant to discourage any encroachment on our feelings of personal safety, whether that results from groups of loitering ‘hoodies’, vandalism, graffiti or theft.In fact I’ve noticed myself a small increase in young gangs prowling around the south High Street area as the hoardings have gone up. All those empty buildings with no supervision are just too tempting, even in broad daylight. Be nice if there was some way to make the owners of deliberately deserted sites financially responsible for improved police presence.The key to getting more police presence is a mounting flood of complaint and reporting every incident. Too many people are afraid of provoking retaliation if they do so, but that leads only to more of the same. Report, take photos and recordings if possible, but get it all on record. Insist on crime report numbers being given to you, they are the things that get added to statistics, not mere verbal notetaking.For the rest, Brian is correct that more public life and movement around the streets should help inhibit the clustering of disaffected youth and other anti-social opportunists.I do have personal feelings about more drastic effective actions, but none that I could admit to. Sadly it has to be acknowledged that the police themselves are often reluctant under current conditions to take the limited actions open to them. As one sergeant remarked to me: "What's the use of arresting some of these punks? They go up before some pansy magistrate who tells them not to be naughty again and sends them back onto the streets."
Nigel Moore ● 6663d