A village reclaims its own streets

Merlyn

Well said Melanie.
We are having to draw lines in the sand on a lot of things these days.

Ceasar Milan of "Dog Whisperer" fame said "you have to discipline a dog in knowing what is not acceptable behaviour before they get to level 10 of intensity. In fact let them know at level 1. Then show affection only when the dog is truly behaving well and settled.
He also said that holds true in any situation.
We have relied on 'authority bodies' to take care of authority issues, thereby relinquishing our responsibility in this.
It is time to get involved.

Ronnie

Neighbourhood watch. That's new!

campbell gray

Dammit! I find myself in complete agreement with Melanie on this one; a major turn upo for tyhe books. I suspect we profoundly disagree on at least one of the causes of the social disengagement that plagues British society but that this attitude of mind is rife cannot be denied.

Mary

We used to have a police force. We still all pay for something called a police service. If someone from this ridiculous Mums' army puts one foot out of line they will be arrested, not the anti social filth that is causing trouble. Liberal nonsense. Wake up, you can't feel anyone's collar these days - it's called assault.

Alex Bensky

Some years ago my neighborhood association in Detroit hosted a city councilwoman who criticized the fact that we hired a private security firm to patrol our streets. It was an eighteenth-century reaction, she told us.

Some of us informed her that it may well have been, but it was to an eighteenth-century problem, namely that our city government couldn't fully protect us; between the security firm and a citizens watch program we had a pleasant, safe neighborhood and if that meant we were scorned as reactionaries, we could live with it.

One difference between us and all too much of the UK is that our police force at least accepted the idea that its primary goal was to protect us and they were simply overstretched.

Robert Mitchum

I am very sceptical and with good reason. Some years ago when living in West London the residents of my area, whose lives were being ruined by threats and vandalism, were asked by the local authorities to keep 'diary sheets' which we did week after week, month after month. Action taken as a result: NIL - in fact the council even released the names of the complainants to the thugs with the result of more intimidation. We were also encouraged to take photos of any antisocial behaviour with the end result that a mother of one of the photographed miscreants accused the taker of the photos of being a paedophile and he received a visit from the police, was given a warning, and the photos were given to the mother of the vandal. None of us would ever trust the authorities again. Beware, you could be the ones ending up in court.

Sam Armstrong

This is all very encouraging Melanie. Signs that a fight back is possible.

There was a woman too, in Leicestershire I think, who organised a street patrol to curb crime on her estate. A few years back there was a woman in London who actually took on drug dealers and won. I remember her being interviewed on the news that her next door neighbours dealt cocaine. One day she burst into their home and swept piles of it off the table onto the carpet in protest, destroying large quantities of their stock. I am glad she didn't get shot! But there are many, many stories out there about how 'the people' are now taking on the bullies.

This is much more effective than CCTV spying and snooping.

It's a shame they don't get reported more, since this idea could spread... thanks for reporting on the above one!!

Sam Armstrong

Mary: "Wake up, you can't feel anyone's collar these days - it's called assault".

Mary, with all due respect that is a wimpy comment. Do we want our country back or not? Is voting gonna help us? No.

If enough people did what the above villagers are doing, the Police would have to accept what was going on or it would have to arrest nearly everyone!

"Ridiculous Mum's army" - whose side are you on? Personally I am moved by these people and their simple intention to reclaim their world.

People like you Mary, are deeply afraid to draw a line in the sand, and attitudes like this have simply been the undoing of this country for so long.

This is NOT the bulldog spirit.

Robert Mitchum
March 15th, 2010 1:37pm:

The reason you are sceptical is that your example is totally different from Melanie's. You took the advice of your local authority, which for all intents and purposes is another arm of the state machine, just like Police. What you see above is a grass roots rebellion, borne of state failure.

Examples also exist on London council estates, some of them very rough, where local residents have had enough 'advice' from their council, and have taken matters into their own hands.

david

Great, the country is so badly screwed that people now have to double as the Police because the Police cant Police....this is far from a good news story...it is an absolute and utter joke.

Augustus

The fact is that more bobbies on the beat in such areas is the best solution. Anyway, I understand that these DIY volunteers have to be vetted by the police before they are fully sanctioned street pounders. And what about the parents of the urinaters and vomiters? Shouldn't they be paid a visit?

James Murphy

I live very near Four Marks. It's a faceless, uniform, one-street, drive-through 'fags, mags and videos' town with no distinguishing features at all -How should the young take any civic pride in this dump, or, indeed, the other 95 per cent of British towns like it? Inasmuch as we let the postwar (mainly 50s and 60s) town planners desecrate our towns and villages in the name of a phony modernism, we're all to blame for social alienation! As Churchill said, 'we build our buildings, then they build us'. For decades we all sat on our hands as our once beautiful was Croydonised. Add to the mix, the poisonous experiment in Marxist social engineering we've endured over the past half century, and it would be amazing if things had NOT ended in disaster. What Britain needs is not more tinkering at the political margins, but change from the grass roots up, amounting ultimately to some sort of major spiritual regeneration. It's surely no coincidence that the greatest cultures, with the greatest architecture and sense of social cohesion, all embraced common spiritual values: - is not 'Religion' the tie that binds (re-ligare)? - Sorry. but a few noble-hearted civilians patrolling the streets of the Four Marks of Britain won't change anything.

Ben Wright

We can’t just keep blaming policing on this score - the solution lies with government coming up with a workable policy.

What we need is a whole new way of dealing with violent crime and reoffending.

As things stand reconviction rates in this country continue to remain terrifyingly high with the cost at least £11bn a year to the tax payer.

But are any of the big three parties suggesting any kind of radical plan of action?! No.

But it’s not about locking people up and throwing away the key either.

The Jury Team have proposed using army style camps which would incorporate punishment, with training and education. http://www.juryteam.org/p05-army-style-punishment.php

Building more prisons would cost £4.2bn whereas the Jury Team plan would cost just £500m. Sounds fair enough to me.

Just think what an asset these young people would be to our community with a structured regime.

Robert Mitchum

'Sam Armstrong' I take your point but you are wrong as we, like Mrs Hebron, DID consult the police and take their advice so the situation was not entirely different. Also, the idea that you can engage with the hardened element is pure fantasy and 'saying hello' is laughable- they only respect hardline tactics and that is only for "Death Wish" Charles Bronson fantasists who, as is often seen, end up in prison themselves or worse, murdered by the thugs. Also, it is very rare these days to achieve unified action. I do not know whether you have ever tried it yourself but mostly, when it comes to it, people back out and leave you high and dry. You may see 'Mary' as wimpy, but have you actually been active or do you speak from your armchair as you mention various incidents but always, it appears, happening somewhere else. Here another example from PERSONAL experience - a 70 year old former neighbour of mine was called a racist by a troublemaker, was arrested, and it took him a year to clear his name in the courts. It almost killed him. Reality is usually very different from these supposed success stories. I remain a sceptic.

Norm

My council tax notice just popped through my letterbox and the amount paid to Northumbria Police last year is £339 Million or £208.22 per head. No wonder they can afford to drive around in BMW 4x4's

daniel maris

The Hampshire Village of Four Marks? Er - yeah, that's real inner city innit blud?

I think the response in these parts ("Sarf Lannah" as we fondly refer to our part of the capital) from the local hoodies would be a little more, shall we say, severe.

Come on, get real. What is required is 24 hours foot and bike police patrols. That's what turned New York from a highly dangerous city to a relatively safe one. The lazy bs in the Police don't want to be tramping the streets at 1am, they'd much rather be handing out leaflets in warm Village Halls to local residents telling them how to organise their own street patrols.

As for Balsall Heath if I recall that was a mainly Muslim initiative and led to quite a bit of harassment of ordinary women who might choose to wear short skirts and high heels. It was very, very close to vigilantism.

daniel maris

James Murphy says:

"As Churchill said, 'we build our buildings, then they build us'. "

I'd never heard that quote before but rather confirms does it not quite how wonderful the man was.

Indeed, our buildings do shape us. And there can be absolutely no doubt that the blank canvases of concrete did and does much to create the sense of alienation and lawlessness that has infected so many of our big social housing estates.

Dixon

I think you have completely missed the point Mel:

"...Now I have got to know those people I once feared and thought of as hooded nonentities. It is just about saying hello. I am able to reassure lots of elderly people that things are not as bad as they seem..."

Thats where this initiative lead, to a realisation that things are not as bad as they seem, that the "hoodies" are people you can say "hello" to and that the fear stalking our streets is...in such places, inhabited by directors and retired nurses, at least...unwarranted.

My experience tells the other side of the story. I am not a hoodie. I am nearly 50. As far as I can recall Ive never mugged anyone or engaged in "anti-social behaviour". Yet, just because of some "Dr Fell" aspect about me, a small but consistent percentage ofpeople react fearfully to me, frequently crossing the road to avoid getting near me. On one occasion a woman even walked right out into the middle of aroad around me and back to the same pavement behind me. I am the person who gets followed by security gaurds while shoplifters are perhaps busy elsewhere in the store. I have even heard my description circulated on a security walky-talky as a suspicious character to watch out for.

These things are all manifestations of the way in which peoples heads are today fed with bigoted stereotypes and fearful balderdash. Fed by the media that feeds on the fear that it fuels and stokes.

Now, a hundred and fifty years ago it was considered normal and a necessity in some districts for "respectable" people to carry a pocket revolver for protection. The strerts of Britain have by and large rarely been less dominated by crime than they are today.

Skeptic

Agree 100% with this being done with the police's cooperation and knowledge to prevent vigilantism.

Also, note that we have here a *parental* reaction -- criticism with empathy. On the one hand they don't allow bad behavior and accept no excuses for it. On the other they speak and get to know the "hooded nonentities" as persons. Perhaps this is the key to the success of this venture.

One doesn't have to buy into the "criminals are poor victims of society" nonsense to realize most young hooligans are not (yet) hardened criminals, but are in effect abandoned kids who grew up without a father (you know, marriage being "oppressive", single-motherhood -- what used to be known as a "broken home" -- a perfectly equal "alternative lifestyle", and all that).

These (still) kids are dying to have a father figure that knows more and is tougher on forbidding things than their co-thugs. No wonder they respond well to this treatment.

For the first time in their lives, they feel ashamed of their behavior -- but with the corollary: when they DON'T vandalize, they feel some self-respect (one based on their own behavior, I mean, not the pablum shoved their way in what is sarcastically known as "school").

Skeptic

>>>>We can’t just keep blaming policing on this score - the solution lies with government...

The "government" will come up with yet another bureaucracy to "solve" the problem that does nothing.

Nicholas Hallam

"There is of course a fine line between this kind of street action and vigilantism. Which is why it is imperative that any such initiatives must be organised with the co-operation of the police."

Near us, concerned citizens, with the co-operation of the police, speed check motorists on country roads. I'm not sure I'm so keen on this.

Dame Celia Molestrangler

I think they should clone SUSAN HILL and/or LIBBY PURVES. A few divisions of these clones in riot gear would soon stamp out rural violence and troublemakers. The French CRS would look like wussies by comparison.

A.F. Texas

Social Norms? You betcha, they are dying. Spot on, as usual, Melanie!

Nele Schindler

What you call 'vigilantism' is just the very sensible notion that security should not be provided by forces of the state that keep you in permanent dependence on their goodwill. It's essentially a move back to basics - that I am responsible for my and my neighbour's safety.

What we need is more of it, in un-cooperation with the police who clearly don't give a flying fart.

campbell

I find it interesting that some of the commentators here, anxious as ever to run down the present in favour of the past, contrive, while seeking to agree with Melanie actually prove the very point sheis trying to make i.e. in modern Britain we have become too dependent on someone else taking responsibility.
Police patrols 24/7 are not the sole answer. Policing never was and never will be successful without the people being prepared to step in and handle the petty annoyances that plague us. In my childhood we had a beat bobby but, by and large, he didn't have to handle even very serious mischief because it was the local people who did that. They got involved!
Shouting and screaming that the modern police is useless, riddled with PC-ness or whatever else it is that is annoying you today is to miss the point: the police need us to take a measure of control over what goes on in our neighbourhoods.

mary

Sam Armstrong - Go on try it see where it gets you. A night in prison would be a real wake up call for you. The answer is not in taking the law into our own hands. Melanie is right in harking back to a time when adults chastised all children as a matter of course. That is not now and what you propose is a course of personal destruction. When you get caught up in a politically correct wrangle it destroys your life. We need a regime change and I don't mean Dave.We need above all a proper police force to uphold the law.You'll get your fingers burnt.

Dixon

"Skeptic
March 16th, 2010 4:46am
Agree 100% with this being done with the police's cooperation and knowledge to prevent vigilantism.

Also, note that we have here a *parental* reaction -- criticism with empathy. On the one hand they don't allow bad behavior and accept no excuses for it. On the other they speak and get to know the "hooded nonentities" as persons. Perhaps this is the key to the success of this venture."

BUT, in Transactional Analysis, a "parental" transaction provokes "infantile" responses, the very thing you dont want. Only transactions in "adult" terms encourage adult responses.

daniel maris

The fact remains that this initiative in a Hampshire village is of supreme irrelevance to what goes on in our big cities and in the anomic windswept estates that are dotted around those big cities from East Kilbride to the Addington.

There "local people taking action" means highly weaponised gangs patrolling their turf.

Only state power can tackle them. And it should. But the solid fact is that from 5pm to 9am such estates are abandoned to the gangs by the Police.

Philip Kedge

I read your article with interest.

The initiative was actually from the start a police initiative. The concept of civilian street patrols and 'Street Watch' was devised by myself and taken to the Four Marks community with the offer for them to work in partnership with police. Through their courage and commitment the residents of Four Marks agreed.

I recognised that there was a gap in the the way in which we as police engaged with communities in tackling anti-social behaviour and a disproportionate fear of crime. That gap was around community empowerment. It was this approach which I believe can help transform our local communities because as police, we cannot do it on our own.

Philip Kedge
Chief Inspector
East Hampshire District Commander.