Camden New Journal - News: Estate flats raided

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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 5 July 2007

Clampdown: police smashed down three doors in the Torriano estate block during the action

Estate flats raided in blitz on ‘tenants who terrorise’

POLICE swooped on four flats on a Kentish Town estate in a raid described by authorities as a clampdown on neighbours from hell but which some tenants claimed was part of a campaign of harassment.
The simultaneous raids last Thursday afternoon saw riot police smash down three doors at the Longmeadow block of the Torriano estate after community police gained warrants to search for stolen goods and drugs. A further flat was searched when residents opened the door to police.
Council officials joined the operation, which was partly based on evidence gathered from secret cameras installed by the Town Hall’s community safety team in response to residents’ complaints about graffiti, drug smoking and intimidation in the estate’s corridors and stairwells.
Although no one in the flats was arrested and no stolen goods were found, the council has begun procedures to evict tenants.
At Kentish Town police station, where the raids were planned and co-ordinated, Sergeant Peter Ryan, of the Safer Neighbourhoods team, briefed officers that nuisance tenants were terrorising law-abiding neighbours.
He said: “Residents think we do not care, that we have let them down. We are going to deliver something for that community who are terrified.”
Any evidence found could result in the culprits being removed from Kentish Town permanently, he added.
But among the crowd who gathered outside as police spent three-and-a-half hours searching the flats, several neighbours told the New Journal that the raid followed a campaign of false complaints by some tenants and represented a misuse of police powers.
The brother of one of the raided tenants said: “This is the third time this year they have come and they have found nothing. What does that sound like to you?
“The police keep coming back to Torriano and victimising the same people. Having the police raid a flat makes people think there is something going on, even when they find nothing. Now the council can evict even without any evidence.”
A council press official said on Monday: “We’re working with police to tackle the problems of anti-social behaviour on the estate to improve the quality of tenants’ lives. That will include starting possession action against the people living on and near the estate who are the instigators of this behaviour.”

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