Ealing North
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Steve Pound MP Ealing North |
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Anti-social behaviour in Ealing North April 2003 So, how many police officers do you think that there are on duty in Ealing today? You may well say “Not enough” but the actual figure is 659. When I was elected in 1997 the total was 503 and, for the first time I can remember, we are almost at full complement for the borough. Yet I’ve never known such an epidemic of vandalism and general anti-social behaviour. From every corner of Ealing North come stories of the horrors endured by ordinary decent people whose lives are being made an utter misery by the activities of – mostly – gangs of young men and women who seem to live lives of such pathetic failure that the only way in which they can make themselves feel at all significant is to kick in a bus shelter or phone box or smash the glass on a set of traffic lights. These gangs are jumping through garden hedges and terrifying people in their homes, scrawling their puerile graffiti all over the borough and setting fires that cause millions of pounds worth of damage,disfigure our neighbourhoods and plunge our people into fear. They are smashing in the windows of parked cars, hurling bricks through windows and stealing from the vulnerable people who they crowd around in broad daylight on well travelled streets. Yet we’ve got more police officers than ever before and men and women of the highest standard that I’ve known. We’ve got more social workers and the pioneering Youth Offending Team attached to the courts. Nationally we jail more of our citizens than any other European country yet we don’t seem to be able to stop the rot. These vandals and hoodlums aren’t underprivileged kids driven to crime by poverty or desperation. Time and again I visit homes bulging with DVD players and widescreen televisions to talk to the parents of some teenager who has been caught in the act of destruction or violence. Building sports halls and leisure centres isn’t the answer. Anyone who comes out with the tired old line that “they’ve got nothing to do” should have a look at some of the facilities that we are rightly proud of in Ealing. I happen to think that we adults and parents have got to face up to our responsibilities in this matter. Last week I saw a gleaming grey Mercedes CLK – registration number T453 BFC -roaring up Lady Margaret Road towards the Ruislip Road. The driver was hurling a stream of rubbish out of the window. McDonald’s boxes followed drinks containers and tissues out of the driver’s side window. What sort of a message did that send to the teenagers walking along the pavement? It’s not a million miles from unthinking littering to graffiti to setting fires to mugging a pensioner. And it was an adult who set such a miserable example. No-one ever said that it was easy to be a parent. Lord alone knows it can be hard at times but I implore anyone reading this to ask themselves two questions. Are you completely happy with the level of crime and vandalism on our streets and, if not, what are you doing about it. We need the police, but the police need us as well. Let’s try to do our bit to help them and see if we can’t make a real difference to the streets where we live. |
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| Disclaimer | Copyright | Designed by Bassam Mahfouz. Promoted by Julian Bell, The Labour Party, Ruskin Hall, 16 Church Road, W3 8PP on behalf of Steve Pound MP |
