Sunday, June 11, 2006
It's your job to fight the yobs, Reid tells public
John Reid, the Telegraph reports, expects us to "stop moaning and take action ". He will now receive hundreds if not thousands of reports by individuals who have done just that and ended up no better off and with the Police nit-picking about the methods used by members of the public to achieve the desired result. I remember once going ballistic because of tanuts as I got into my car and after sevewral weeks a Police report which concentrated on all the in correct ways I had gone about dealing with the yobs, while nothing at all on the accusations I had made. The method of clearing up the problem (i.e. not getting to the paperwork stage) seemed to be to attack the complainant rather the the source of the trouble.
The biggest issue for people is low level nuisance. And that in essence of young 'uns gather on street corners. If this was for 10 minutes most would accept it. However, they tend to stay all day with the attendance noise, mess, and intent to irritate, intimidate or harass anyone within reach. This can involve such very annoying things as making it difficult to drive you car past them by refusing to get up off the road on which they might be lying, or the bog standard soto voce insults or jibs to anyone passing which seem to be part of in-group bonding.
When the Anti-Social behaviour Act came out in 2003, I perused it with due diligence, hoping this would mean more coppers would appear in our village to disperse the usual suspects and keep an eye on what they were up to. In the old days the booby knew the kids and talked to them on his rounds.he had uptodate intelligence on what was going on, and who was up to no good. Now it is all procactivity. A car patrols - if you are lucky, or because you have harassed your local station with requests fora visit - the police stay in their cars, then a few minutes later they depart.
