Silent Crime: How anti-social behaviour is affecting a street in Hull and what can be done

“I got a message on the Avenues Crime Facebook site that someone just tried to stab someone outside Sainsbury’s on Princes Avenue,” said one householder.

“Generally it’s quite low-level anti-social behaviour, which I believe is triggered by the concentration of supported accommodation hostels. Burglary and car crime is quite rare, it’s shouting after midnight, the dealing that goes on around you.

“Generally we find the authorities not interested in low-level reports. You spend your life reporting stuff and in the end you don’t bother – it’s so much hassle.”

The finger of blame has been pointed at a large hostel housing people hit by homelessness, addiction problems and other complex issues. But the resident, who doesn’t want to be named, says it could just as well be associated with a number of other halfway houses in the area, and it’s not easy to know where the problems are stemming from.

“If I ring 101, they’d say it’s anti-social behaviour. Sometimes you ring the council and they say ring the police. We feel we are in a bit of a goldfish bowl. It is not directly people next door, it’s the people around in the area. You end up switching off.”

Earlier this month Hull MP, Diana Johnson, now Policing Minister, spoke at the Police Superintendents Association’s conference in Warwickshire, and lamented how an “epidemic” of stealing and anti-social behaviour was “corroding” communities. Ironically her purse was stolen during her stay at the four-star Chesford Grange hotel.

She promised a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee “restoring patrols to town centres, recruiting thousands of additional police personnel, and ensuring every community has a named local police officer to turn to”. The resident says it is a “good idea in principle” but he adds: “We’ve had all this before. I’ve spoken to countless police officers.

“What you tend to find is they will move on as there’s always a lot of reorganisation. One time I didn’t see them for three months and when they came back, he said he’d been on special assignment. There’s no continuity.”

Retired Humberside Police chief superintendent and former police and crime commissioner Keith Hunter welcomed the pledge but said the “devil will be in the detail” in terms of additional resources and how police forces decide to implement it.

“Each force will go its own way unless there is a directive from government which would have to be set in statute as to how local policing would be organised,” he said.

“Chief constables have operational independence and no one can tell them how to use their resources.”

Having a named police officer is “one thing, but having one available and responsive is another”.

Mr Hunter added: “What happens when they are on holiday or off sick? It is not as straightforward as everyone seems to think.”

As commander of Hull in the early 2000s, he said a co-ordinated response through schools, local authorities and anti-social behaviour teams based on restorative practices had helped drive down anti-social behaviour by 70 per cent, together with intervention from Sure Start centres at an earlier stage. However, neighbourhood policing had been undermined through 14 years of austerity with the closure of youth clubs and Sure Start centres.

Schools have converted to academies outwith council control which had made it more difficult to get a consistent approach, with some reluctant to have police on the premises for fear of sending out the wrong message to parents, he added.