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L-R: Frank Dobson, MP, tenants' representative Charlie Beasley, and by-election hopeful Mike Katz, discuss youth disorder on the Denton Estate |
Political fight in ward that’s a battleground
Parties square up on estate hit by crimewave“
IT has come to something when fathers and grandfathers have to walk their 16-year-olds to the shops because they are not safe without them,” said Charlie Beasley, a resident in the Denton Estate in Haverstock.
“The police here seem to think that crime only happens between eight and five – but it’s 24 hours.”
Residents and businesses around the junction of Prince of Wales Road and Malden Road have been complaining for months about drugs and gangs in the maze-like estate and its surrounding streets, where graffiti tags demarcate the territory of the Grey Gang and the Denton Boyz.
Groups of up to 40 youths tear through Denton on foot or scooters and gather around the remaining shops and fast-food outlets in Malden Road, creating an atmosphere blamed by shopkeepers for the closure of three stores.
The New Journal has seen figures showing that in the four weeks from April 14, 40 criminal offences were recorded in Malden Road alone, including a vicious assault in which a 24-year-old man was dragged from a bus by a mob and stabbed in the street – residents are reluctant to tell the full story.
A resident in her fifties, who asked not to be named, said on Monday: “There is nothing we can do because the police aren’t here all the time and when they aren’t, these boys rule this place.
“One of them said to me ‘if any of you lot get one of my homeboys taken off this estate we’re going to punish you’. And they would.”
Soon the estate is set to become a battlefield of a different kind as Labour pitch their campaign for the July 12 council by-election on allegations of neglect and disorganisation by the current Lib Dem/Conservative administration.
MP Frank Dobson threw his weight behind Labour candidate Mike Katz during a walkabout on the estate on Monday, concluding: “There’s no concerted effort by the council and the police to deal with the problems of bad or dangerous behaviour.
“Everywhere I go people say the police do not respond, and the council are supposed to respond and they don’t. The whole system has to co-operate to deal with this – and it hasn’t.”
According to Mr Katz, who hopes to take the Haverstock seat vacated by the forced retirement of veteran Labour councillor Roy Shaw, the council has failed to come up with a plan.
He said: “Haverstock ward has the largest young population in all of Camden, and it doesn’t help if you cut youth services as this council has done.
“The council does not seem to be talking to police. But one thing you can’t deny is that people feel they’re being left alone.”
The council’s Lib Dem community safety chief, Cllr Ben Rawlings, is adamant that his administration’s new approach of focusing on individual young people will succeed where Labour, in charge for 35 years up to March last year, did not.
He said: “There are problems there and previous approaches haven’t solved them.
“We have already had some success in identifying the individuals involved and dealing with them – 15 young people are being worked with by the YISP (Youth Inclusion Support Panel).”
The Lib Dem candidate, Matt Sanders, lives close to the estate and said on Monday that the by-election would be largely fought over the council’s record on dealing with anti-social behaviour.
He said: “This is a big issue and it has been treated as a big priority by the council. But this is not a new problem. I think residents understand that this sort of problem takes time to solve.”
The New Journal has reported four times this year on the dismay of residents, ranging from dissatisfaction with police response to 999 calls to the existence of a ghost ‘community intelligence line’ which rang unanswered in Kentish Town Police Station, and the expiry last week of the dispersal notice covering the ward, which had allowed police to move on groups of two or more.
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