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Police to take ‘midnight’s children’ off streets
‘We’ll be talking to youths, not swooping on them’
POLICE will tonight (Friday) start a campaign aimed at removing “vulnerable” youths off the streets around Caledonian ward, the Tribune can reveal.
Youths deemed by the Operation Staysafe team to need extra care – found drinking under age, or deemed too young to be out – will be taken home to parents or carers.
As a last resort, if parents are out or if children need social services intervention, youths will be taken to the Town Hall’s social care department at 222 Upper Street, which is doubling as the operation’s headquarters.
The £5,000 operation will involve a team of 10 police and 17 council staff and run from 8pm to midnight, concentrating on Caledonian Road and the Bemerton Estate.
If successful, it could be repeated across the borough.
The Caledonian ward is said to attract youths from a distance because is it seen as a “safe, neutral territory”, unclaimed by gangs.
Michael Mackay, Islington’s head of targeted youth support, said: “It’s about young people who are particularly vulnerable, it’s not about swooping on young people who are just out doing their thing.”
He said the team will deal with most situations through street chats and by dishing out information.
Islington crime chief, Lib Dem councillor Terry Stacy said: “Taking youths to 222 Upper Street is the final stage. Most of this will be done on the streets – if we end the evening with no young people in 222 Upper Street that’s absolutely fine. That’s what I’d like to be judged on.”
Cllr Stacy said the operation would take a softer approach than neighbouring Camden, where 11 children were taken into police protection and another seven taken home when the scheme was introduced last month.
“It’s very much an Islington approach,” he said.
“The hard-handed way Camden went about it is not necessarily the way we will.”
He said Islington’s reliance on softer acceptable behaviour contracts rather than anti-social behaviour orders illustrates the difference.
Caledonian ward Labour Councillor Paul Convery said: “We should send a clear message that kids shouldn’t be hanging around getting in trouble or being on the receiving end of trouble.
“Quite a lot of kids from different parts of the borough hang around there, and it seems the reason they come some distance is because it’s nobody’s and so they feel ‘safe’ – safer than places closer to Hackney and Haringey.”
Sergeant Andy Briers, who heads the operation, said: “There’s no watershed, it’s a case-by-case basis. We don’t have set questions, we just chat to the youths.
“We’ll refer them to the boat club, football clubs, the Sobell Centre. These things have been happening for months but this is bringing it all together on a particular night.”
He added: “Traditionally if no parents are in, we’d take them to the police station for protection and we don’t want to do that. We want to take them to a place of safety.”
Sgt Briers admitted that details will be taken of all young people spoken to, unless they refuse to comply, but added: “We’ll probably keep a total of young people we’ve engaged with but we certainly won’t keep their details on a database.” |
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