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Police survey highlights positive effect of IWCA anti-drugs campaigns
According to a recent survey carried out by the Leys Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG), which is made up of police and local government officials, over half of Leys residents who were questioned feel there are no particular crime-related problems on the estate.
Independent Working Class Association councillor Stuart Craft said, ‘Many people will no doubt feel, as I do, that the Neighbourhood Action Group is overplaying the improvements on the estate. Nonetheless, what these results show is that the long-running campaign by the IWCA to tackle crack and heroin dealing, antisocial behaviour and other types of crime has been having an effect.
‘When we started highlighting these issues, just over five years ago, a majority of residents on the estate felt that hard drug dealing was a serious problem. Dealers were openly plying their trade without a care in the world while police cars sailed by watching them. Meanwhile the local Labour councillors refused to admit there was a problem at all.’
During the time it has been active on Blackbird and Greater Leys, the IWCA has surveyed over a thousand households—revealing the extent of the drugs problem, carried out community patrols against drug dealers, and has been instrumental in closing down numerous ‘crack houses’.
The IWCA also successfully campaigned to drive out ‘Yardie’ criminals from the Blackbird Leys community centre bar and set up pickets in Gillians Park to remove a gang of antisocial teenagers who had carried out violent attacks and muggings.
Local resident Mick Brackett told the Oxford Mail, ‘The area has got a million times better—I would not live anywhere else. I’ve lived here for 45 years but in the past five years it has become much more relaxing.’
Cllr Craft commented, ‘Before these campaigns the estate had been going downhill for a long time under the stewardship of New Labour. We have a long, long way to go, but if the IWCA did not exist, neither would the increased police presence on the estate.’
The effect of the IWCA’s work was underlined in the Oxford Mail by neighbourhood police officer Phil Standish who said, ‘Tackling drugs crime remains the number one issue on the estate’—a far cry from the days when Labour councillors and police officers preferred to pretend the problem didn’t exist.
Leys Independent, issue 36, June 2007
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Blackbird Leys councillor Stuart Craft: ‘The long-running campaign by the IWCA to tackle crack and heroin dealing, antisocial behaviour and other types of crime has been having an effect.’
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