Anti Social Behaviour In Leverstock Green.

The local Police response

Anti-social behaviour effects everyone, and the Community Team at Hemel police station are one of the many agencies available to help those affected by it. Anti-social behaviour is now recognised as a vital key to our communities’ crime and disorder problems; if we deal with this behaviour at an early stage it reduces the chance of further problems later on. Dealing with Anti-social behaviour needs everyone, the whole community. The police are an intelligence based service, and we rely on YOUR information and calls to tackle this problem effectively.

Our aim is to tackle this issue together; this is the essence of community policing. Following your call we gather the information that we can act on directly or pass onto the council or housing associations and youth offending teams; we then work directly with the parents or offenders in an effort to educate them; this direction has provided some excellent results.

At the end of the day we all want the same thing; you want to stop being plagued by Anti-social behaviour, we want to stop criminal behaviour before it has a chance to establish itself, and housing associations don’t want troublemakers in their properties! By working together I’m sure we can find a mutually agreeable solution.

At the moment your Community Team have several ways of dealing with Anti-social behaviour:

·         We can obtain dispersal orders that allow us to break up gangs of youths; those who do not comply can be arrested or escorted home depending on their age.

·         We can gather information via CCTV that can be used against them in court, housing applications, and Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBO’s)

·         We can (with the help of the Community Safety Unit, Council, and Youth Offending Team) apply for an Anti-social Behaviour Order, this is a legally binding set of rules that must be understood and agreed to by the recipient;

·         If any of the rules are broken then an Anti-social Behaviour Contract can be used; this has stronger implications, and if broken can lead to imprisonment, detention, fines, and loss of housing.

Our ideal vision is to have a PCSO in every locality, but the reality is that they are a limited resource. PCSO’s are currently assigned to localities with an identified need for the benefits that a PCSO can provide; there is a steady flow of PCSO’s joining our ranks so our vision may become reality in the not too distant future!