Reclaiming our estate
Naming and shaming known crack-cocaine and heroin dealers was one of the solutions agreed by residents at the latest IWCA public meeting. Stuart Craft looks at the responses in the media and explains why everyone in the community has a role to play in the campaign to take Blackbird Leys back from the dealers.
When the IWCA stood for election in May we committed ourselves to tackling the issue of class-A drug dealing. In a special edition of the Leys Independent I wrote, ‘winning council seats will allow us to step up our campaigns and apply more pressure to get things done on behalf of Blackbird Leys residents.’ I also stressed the importance of ‘seeking solutions from within the community,’ and promised that the IWCA would hold a public meeting in order to do this.
Less than two months after the election, on 29 June, the IWCA held its first public meeting to discuss the way forward on the drugs issue. An article in the last issue of Leys Independent reported on this meeting and announced that a second meeting would take place on 27 July.
The article also pointed out that if residents got things moving then the police, media, housing associations and local politicians would be forced to take an interest in order to hide their previous inactivity.
Media attention
Residents have long complained to the IWCA that the police are doing nothing to stop open drug dealing on Blackbird Leys. The housing associations have also been criticised for trying to avoid the issue, while the New Labour councillors for the estate, Val Smith, Pat Stannard and Molly Florey, have spent the last few years trying to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.
Since the first IWCA public meeting in June the Oxford Mail has run a number of high profile stories covering the class-A drug-dealing problem on Blackbird Leys. Previously this newspaper had completely ignored the issue, refusing to report on the crack dealers operating outside New Labour cabinet minister Andrew Smith’s house and the dealing taking place on Starwort Path—a problem residents felt was exacerbated by broken street lights being left unrepaired by the council for up to six years.
Nonetheless, the Oxford Mail reported on the first IWCA public meeting in two separate articles (‘Residents threaten action on dealers’, 1 July and ‘Yardie problem over, say police’, 8 July). Due to this belated attention BBC South TV became interested in the issue and ran a feature on our campaign in the evening news on 29 July, following the second public meeting. I also gave interviews to BBC Radio Oxford, Fox FM and Radio Fusion.
Police response
It was expected that all this publicity would finally force the authorities to respond with initiatives of their own, so they could at least give the appearance of doing something. Sure enough the police announced in the Oxford Mail that £170,000 from the Government’s Communities Against Drugs (CAD) initiative and £140,000 under its street crime initiative had now been made available to deal with the problem (‘Yardie problem over…’, 8 July).
Two days later it was reported that Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) would be used against drug dealers (‘Court orders to be used to target drug dealers’, Oxford Mail, 10 July). A spokesperson for the council’s Crime and Nuisance Action Team (CANAcT), which issues the ASBOs was quoted as saying, ‘we want to get across to drug dealers that we mean business.’ The CANAcT team was set up with an annual budget of £150,000 over a year ago. However, only one ASBO has been served in all that time—not an encouraging record.
By the time the IWCA’s second public meeting took place the police were able to announce yet another initiative. This time they were going to take aerial photographs of Gillians Park, to be used to ‘design out’ crime (‘Park redesign aims to flush out dealers’, Oxford Mail, 27 July). It was not explained why aerial photographs were necessary for this exercise. Perhaps it is because the police aren’t happy to investigate the park on foot. I was also quoted in this article, expressing reservations about the scheme and calling for residents to be consulted.
If the redesign of the park goes ahead then the IWCA will do its best to ensure any changes are in the best interests of people living on Blackbird Leys.
Targeting the innocent
Alongside these initiatives the police also decided to show residents they were doing something on the ground. Rather than arresting one of the big dealers on the estate, most of whom must surely be well-known to the police, they decided to act on a single tip-off and staged an extremely distressing dawn raid on the house of 55 year-old Mrs Langlais—a pillar of the community who was entirely innocent of any crime—and for good measure strip-searched her lodger’s girlfriend who was also in the house at the time.
It is ironic that, previously, when the IWCA suggested residents could gather video-taped evidence of known dealers to be used in a name and shame campaign, the police warned that we could be contravening the human rights of the dealers (‘Residents threaten action on dealers’, Oxford Mail, 1 July). Oddly, all this concern for the human rights of crack dealers doesn’t appear to stretch to the police needing any evidence at all before breaking down innocent people’s doors.
Naming and shaming
Despite the media attention gained from the IWCA public meetings there must be some doubt that the recent promises made by the police will actually amount to any significant action to stop the crack and heroin dealers. It is therefore vital that those of us who live on the estate continue to work together to tackle the problem ourselves.
As a result of discussions amongst the forty or so residents who attended the two public meetings a number of measures were agreed, aimed at isolating the dealers and preventing them from carrying out their activities. These include naming and shaming known class-A drug dealers and putting pressure on the housing associations to take action against tenants who are openly dealing hard drugs and therefore in breach of their tenancy agreements.
Both initiatives require hard evidence to be obtained before they can proceed and I will take the advice of residents who are currently involved in the campaign when sufficient information has been gathered.
Community participation
In the meantime, everyone in the community has a role to play in reclaiming those parts of the estate that have been colonised by the dealers. By organising and participating in regular community activities based around those areas, residents can make it uncomfortable for dealers to operate.
A prime example of this is the part of Nightingale Avenue that borders the Barn. Residents have identified two properties in this area which are used as bases by class-A drug dealers. Recently the IWCA has received more complaints about these households than about anywhere else on the estate. The IWCA already uses the Barn for the Children’s Cinema and, significantly, this was the venue for the public meetings on tackling the heroin and crack dealers.
Every time the Barn is used for community events such as the regular karate sessions, the youth club or the recent successful DJ competition a blow is struck against the dealers who want the area to themselves so they can carry on their activities undisturbed. If the dealers can keep people off the streets and out of the parks and communal spaces through fear then they have won. By making full use of these areas whenever we have the opportunity we can all play a part in stopping them.
The choice is clear. If we do nothing or wait for outside forces to act then the drug dealing problem, and with it the general quality of life on the estate, will continue to get worse. There are many different things for people to do if they want to help turn things around, but the most important thing is that we must act together.
Leys Independent, issue 15, September 2002
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