Trouble In The Neighbourhood


We've suffered a period of anti-social behaviour in our road over the past ten days or so which reached a climax on Friday night when we became prisoners in our own house from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m because of a gang of youths.

The problems began in the normal way, the systematic 'door knockin' by a gang of between four and eight youths on various houses over a period of three nights and then things suddenly escalted. When I returned home on Wednesday night Nathalie met me by my car, as she does every night and has done since she was old enough to walk on her own, and told me that the previous night one of the gang had been caught by an irate neighbour and had the Bart Simpson treatment - the ringing of his neck. Then within half an hour of my arriving home, and in broad daylight, three or four youths decided to try the same prank on one of our neighbours, unfortunately their timing was all wrong and they were confronted by two adults and they promptly ran.

On Thursday night at around eight o'clock a football was kicked against our wall, we are the last house in a block of four and therefore ideal for 'squash'. The usual procedure is that I let them carry on for five minutes and then go out and politely ask them to stop. After about five minutes I went out and was confronted by four youths who were clearly spoiling for a fight. I asked them to stop to which they replied, "Get lost paedo, baldy twat." One of them, not much older than 13 or 14 dropped his trousers and invited me to 'take a photograph, it will last longer.' One of the others, again not much older than 14, repeated the invitation. I asked them to be reasonable and said that as they didn't live in our close they should move on - this they did, only to return two hours later once it was dark. They began again kicking the ball but this time it was as hard as possible, trying to make as much noise as they could. I went out to be met with a mouthful of abuse, Janis then came out and so did Nathalie, to be greeted by wolf whistles.

Nathalie was getting quite stressed to be honest and started shouting at them, I think there was also a sense of frustration, sometimes she wonders what the point is of being a trainee black belt if you can't actually kick some butt.

Anyway after a lengthy stand-off they disappeared, or so we thought.

On Friday I was in Southampton at a clients but I had decided to visit Christchurch Police Station on my way home. Instead of the indifference I had been expecting I was met with a really positive response, I was given two numbers to call, details were logged, I was given a crime number to quote and the names of two police officers who apparently are our local anti-social behaviour crime fighters.

Shortly after returning home we were visited by a neighbour who has the advantage of living opposite us and so can see the area the youths were playing on whereas we could only hear the sound of the ball thumping against our wall. It turned out that on Thursday night after disappearing they came back, waited for all the lights to go out and then let some car tyres down, they had also kicked a football against our neighbours front door with sufficient force to take it off its bottom hinges.

Friday night was worse than Thursday. There was no pretence of any game, I watched three of the group walk up the road, round to the side of the house and begin kicking the ball against the wall as hard as they could. We had been told by the Police not to confront them to leave them alone because they would get bored and to phone the two numbers we had been given. I made three phone calls between 8:15 and 11 - by the time I made the last one things had got really stupid. They had given up with just kicking the ball they were now throwing stones at the windows at the back of the house, this they did by going down the alley that leads to our garden gate and that of two of our neighbours. They kicked the ball against the front door, the drain pipe and the wire cage that covers the ventilation for the gas central heating, hot water system.

A police car did show up just after 11 and drove around, we discovered on Saturday that three of the gang actually hid at the side of our house so the car headlights wouldn't pick them out and that they were all dressed in black. This was observed by one of our neighbours who was also calling the police - the helpful desk Sergeant had said to make as many calls as we wanted, all would be logged and used as intelligence.

By around 11:30 they had had enough and sloped off to their beds, they were clearly pissed off that they hadn't got much of a response from me and I could hear them speculating about whether or not they had terrorised us enough to get us to move out.

Thursday and Friday night had I think produced a total of about four hours decent sleep between them, every little sound in the garden seemed exaggerated. On Saturday I woke up early and decided I wouldn't go on my planned trip to Avebury and would stay closer to home, working on the assumption that they might come back in daylight on the weekend as they would assume I would be home. Janis insisted I went and just after I had arrived at the National Trust Car Park I received a text telling me that the Police had been round and that somebody had named names and that two officers were in the process of visiting the houses of the three main culprits. The Police explained to them and to us that the next course of action would be to charge them, the menu so far consisting of criminal damage (for the door) and trespass - although I was disturbed to learn on Saturday that this isn't apparently considered a crime.

Saturday night and Sunday night passed off peacefully. No footballs, no knocking on doors, no climbing on garages, stones being thrown at windows, verbal abuse - after the previous few nights it was strangely normal. Sitting in the living room watching Blur play Glastonbury as the sun set slowly beyond the honeysuckle was a perfect way to end the weekend.