Camden New Journal - News: Zone 'tackles gang disorder'

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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 19 April 2007

Zone ‘tackles gang disorder’

THE Town Hall has imposed a dispersal zone to deal with what the council called a “recent upsurge in youth and gang disorder in parts of Camden”, giving police powers to break up groups congregating in Somers Town and Regent’s Park.
Town Hall chiefs say their hands were forced by a clash in March which saw 100 youths with baseball bats marching through the Regent’s Park estate.
Council crime chiefs applied Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) legislation to allow police to order non-residents out of the area for 24 hours and disperse groups of two or more – a power that will stand for six months.
Councillor Ben Rawlings, the Lib Dem community safety tsar who has criticised ASB powers as “heavy-handed, blunt, and knee-jerk” and “stigmatising to whole sections of the community”, insisted yesterday (Wednesday) that this latest use was “different” because it was called for by the newly-formed Youth Disorder Group rather than police.
And he insisted that work on knife control, community cohesion and youth engagement had changed the situation since Mahir Osman’s death (see story, left).
“We haven’t had anything on a par with that since. Over the past year we have done a lot of work – the only way to a safe community is a strong inclusive community,” he said.
Opposition Labour spokesman Cllr Theo Blackwell said his group supported the move. “In the past few months there have been a number of serious incidents,” he said. “In the past dispersal zones have worked really well and been supported by residents and young people.”

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