Post by Joe K on Sept 2, 2013 4:10:49 GMT
I meant to publish Kay's argument against this gating order before now, but better a tad late than never...
27th August 2013
FAO Gloucester City Council
and Sgt. Elizabeth Lovell.
Organ’s Alley – Proposed Gating Order.
Dear All,
This letter is a response to the information that I received from the city council under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The first thing that struck me was that there was so little documentation – only thirteen pages. I had asked for “all of the information that Lisa Jones has about Organ’s Alley, that is being offered as evidence in relation to the gating order.” Most of the ‘evidence’ is contained in the statement by Police Sergeant Elizabeth Lovell, so I will concentrate on that statement.
The first line of Sgt. Lovell’s statement begins: “Organs Alley is a small dark alley…” Straight away, we have a problem with the facts of the case. Calling the alley “small” is presumably designed to make it seem claustrophobic and dangerous. It is actually a normal size for an alley, as opposed to a road. The claim that the alley is “dark” is simply a lie – there is no other word for it. Sgt. Lovell is clearly knowledgeable about that area, so must know perfectly well that the alley has superb street lighting that was installed circa 2007 when the new houses were built in the alley. If Sgt. Lovell were to give such a false statement to a court, either the judge or a defence barrister would absolutely rip her to shreds, so why does she think that it is acceptable to lie in a statement to the city council’s licensing department?
“Eastgate St is renowned for having the highest levels of antisocial behaviour incidents in the county. Between the 1st Jan 2013 and 12th June 2013 there were 158 police incidents around Eastgate St, with 69 crimes taking place.”
Well, that’s because the so-called NightSafe group has encouraged party people (i.e. drunken revellers) to frequent the area and has even closed the road off for them on Friday and Saturday nights, so that they are free to fight outside venues or fall into the road without getting run over by passing vehicles.
The crime figures suggest that there was little problem with Organ’s Alley prior to the closure of the road on Friday and Saturday nights. According to the statistics supplied to me by Gloucestershire Constabulary under a Freedom of Information request, there were two reported crimes in Organ’s Alley in the twelve months from June 2004 to May 2005, and then no more reported crimes till three in the twenty-four months from June 2011 to May 2013. According to Sgt. Lovell, these crimes were violence against the person, criminal damage, and robbery. While these are serious crimes, three crimes in Organ’s Alley over such a long period is not actually a particularly high number, especially considering the appallingly high level of crime generally in the Eastgate Street area. Remember, according to Sgt. Lovell, there were 69 crimes around Eastgate Street in a five-and-a-half month period! I suspect that many of the crimes were associated with the night-time economy of that area: a drunken person is not only more likely to commit crime, but also more likely to be the victim of crime. How will the closure of Organ's Alley have a statistically significant impact on the overall crime and anti-social behaviour figures for the Eastgate Street area?
One of the main problems in Organ’s alley seems to be urination:
This is the first 'issue' listed in Sgt. Lovell’s statement: “Urinating. Currently there are no public toilets available in this area.” Whose fault is that? Gloucester City Council has closed nearly all of the public toilets and replaced them with a community toilet scheme. Most of the toilets that are available during the day are unavailable at night. “Customers who are not allowed in venues, have been removed from venues, or simply do not want to use the long queues in the clubs and pubs, use the alleyway as a perfect area for relieving themselves.” Which club is right next to the alleyway? Butler’s Bar! I suggest that it is mainly their customers who are relieving themselves in the alleyway, probably after being thrown out of the bar for being troublesome.
There is no by-law in Gloucester making it an offence to urinate in public. I really think that there should be one. Information on the internet suggests that many cities do have such a by-law. In the absence of a by-law against urinating in public, the police find it difficult to deal with offenders. In order for a police officer to deal with an offender under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, it would have to be shown that the act of urinating in Organ’s Alley caused “harassment, alarm or distress” to someone within sight or hearing. It is a defence that a perpetrator “had no reason to believe that there was any person within sight or hearing who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”. While public urination is unpleasant, the claim that it could cause “harassment, alarm or distress” when carried out in an alleyway at night is pushing the bounds of Section 5 of the Public Order Act. That is the reason that it is imperative that a new by-law is made in Gloucester against public urination. By-laws can be policed by police officers, police community support officers and council officers, thus greatly increasing the number of people lawfully allowed to deal with the problem of urination in alleyways.
The next problem allegedly associated with Organ’s Alley is drugs:
Sgt. Lovell claims that police intelligence suggests that the alley has been used for drug dealing since 2008. However, there is evidence of only one arrest, on 6th January 2013. If drug dealing is rife in the alley, and there are plain clothed police operations in the city centre to catch drug dealers, and the alley is patrolled on every StreetSafe deployment, why has there been only one arrest in the alley? For some reason, that arrest doesn’t seem to have found its way onto the crime figures for the alley, as there are only three crimes recorded from June 2011 to May 2013. Did this arrest lead to a conviction? If not, why not?
“Intelligence has stated that offenders have attempted to avoid the drugs monitoring that Butler’s conduct on entry to their venue by going into the alleyway and throwing drugs over the fence to their colleagues in the beer garden at Butler’s. It has also been suggested that the same could take place for weapons etc.”
Well, these things could happen, but apparently no-one has ever actually been caught. Why not? Could CCTV help with this alleged problem? It would at least prove one way or the other whether criminals are, indeed, throwing items over the wall.
And so we come to the issue of CCTV:
Sgt. Lovell states: “There is no CCTV on this alleyway, and there is not any being provided on the upgrade of the city cctv, as there are other priority areas that are uncovered at present.” As soon as I read this statement, it seemed pretty unreasonable. If the alley is so bad that it requires a gating order, why would it not be a priority for CCTV? So I put in FoI requests to both the city council and the police to ask what these other priority areas were. The city council replied that, although it was unlikely that additional CCTV cameras would be installed, there might be opportunities for existing camera locations to be moved. These locations would be considered on a case by case basis. So I then made a request to the city council that Organ’s Alley should be considered as a new location for a CCTV camera. I am still awaiting a response to that request.
The police response to my FoI request about CCTV in Organ’s Alley read as follows:
“No information held. That is to say that the Force does not have any recorded information in relation to the priority areas for CCTV.
“The Inspector for Gloucester LPA has provided the below comment outside of the FOI act in order to assist:
“The City Centre CCTV is owned and maintained by the City Council and any decision making in relation to new cameras and the areas they will be lies with them.”
So, there you have it. CCTV is absolutely nothing to do with the police, and Sgt. Lovell must have gone well beyond her knowledge and remit in order to make the statement: “There is no CCTV on this alleyway, and there is not any being provided on the upgrade of the city cctv, as there are other priority areas that are uncovered at present.” It is up to Sgt. Lovell to justify this statement and provide evidence on these other priority areas, given that the Force claims officially to know nothing about the matter.
The implication that there is more criminality linked to Organ’s Alley than is recorded:
Both the city council and the police have attempted to imply that the crime and anti-social behaviour problem in Organ's Alley is somehow worse than anywhere else, and that the official figures don't paint the whole picture. However, it is surely the case for virtually any location that there is more crime and anti-social behaviour than ever gets recorded on official documents. Organ’s Alley is no different in this respect. Sgt. Lovell also claims, under the heading Police Analysts Research, that there is more criminality in Organ’s Alley that she can’t divulge because it “relates to intelligence which is protected” What absolute rot. Are we dealing with serious organised crime or international espionage here? The protected evidence probably relates to drugs, but you already know what I think of the claims about drugs – the police need to get out there and catch the culprits (as it appears that they did for one drug dealer on 6th January 2013).
Sgt. Lovell also claims that there is a lack of hard evidence in terms of crime reports because “the alleyway is not usually a reference point for incident logs or forms.” Why not? It is a named location, with eight residential buildings having the postal address of Organ’s Alley. Could it be that nearly every incident in that alleyway can be traced back to Butler’s Bar? Of course, I can’t prove this, but it does offer a logical explanation for the lack of recorded incidents in the alley itself. If a fight breaks out at Butler’s Bar and spills out into Eastgate Street and Organ’s Alley, the incident will be recorded as happening at Butler’s Bar. Similarly, if rowdy customers are ejected from Butler’s Bar, there is a chance that they will enter the alley and cause some sort of trouble. This is not in any way the fault of Organ’s Alley.
In my opinion, the root of the problem lies in the whole attitude that the authorities have to drunkenness and anti-social behaviour in the Eastgate Street area on Friday and Saturday nights. The whole object of NightSafe seems to be make revellers feel safe, rather than to make Gloucester city centre a nice place for those of us who don't want to get smashed out of our minds. The council and the police both need to get much tougher with all forms of anti-social behaviour in the Eastgate Street area, including giving out fines.
Gating one alley will simply move the problems elsewhere:
The police have recently taken to issuing drunk and disorderly people with Section 27 notices under the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. These are specific to alcohol related disorder in public places, and require the individual to leave a locality for up to 48 hours. About a dozen of these notices are being issued each weekend in the Eastgate Street area (according to a report in The Citizen). They can work for a particular area, but what about the roads that the excluded people take on their way back home? Do drunken people act reasonably while walking back home? I think that there may be a reason why the shops in Barton Street have had their windows smashed more frequently in recent weeks.
I think that it is useful at this point to compare the treatment of reported incidents in a particular part of Barton with those in Organ's Alley. There were a total of seven incidents reported to police in Organ's Alley from the beginning of 2012 to mid-June 2013; these consisted of three crimes, a report of a fight, something to do with 'BHC monitoring' (whatever that is) and dumped bicycles. In contrast, Napier Street in Barton (which has a small play area) had about 70 incidents reported to police in 2012 according to reports in The Citizen. The Citizen articles didn't say how many of these were given crime numbers by the police, but 70 incidents of anti-social behaviour in one small area in 12 months is quite a lot, you've got to admit. It seems that, after a huge effort by the police (including the use of a mosquito device at night, and the setting up of a youth club for the bored Czech youths), the troublesome youths were finally ousted from the play area...and they simply went to St. James' Park in Tredworth, which isn't that far away, and continued their anti-social behaviour. My main point, once again, is that banning criminals and other troublesome people from a particular area will result in their committing their crimes and anti-social acts elsewhere.
One of the really odd things about the evidence in favour of a gating order that I received from the city council under the FoI request is that not one of the people who lives in Organ's Alley cares enough about the proposed gating order to fill in a consultation form to support the order. Only eight local people support the gating order, and not one actually lives in the alley; three either live or have a business on either side of the Eastgate Street entrance to the alley; five live in the area, but would not be affected by the alleged problems in the alley.
I object to the proposed gating order on Organ's Alley.
Yours faithfully,
Kay Powell.
27th August 2013
FAO Gloucester City Council
and Sgt. Elizabeth Lovell.
Organ’s Alley – Proposed Gating Order.
Dear All,
This letter is a response to the information that I received from the city council under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The first thing that struck me was that there was so little documentation – only thirteen pages. I had asked for “all of the information that Lisa Jones has about Organ’s Alley, that is being offered as evidence in relation to the gating order.” Most of the ‘evidence’ is contained in the statement by Police Sergeant Elizabeth Lovell, so I will concentrate on that statement.
The first line of Sgt. Lovell’s statement begins: “Organs Alley is a small dark alley…” Straight away, we have a problem with the facts of the case. Calling the alley “small” is presumably designed to make it seem claustrophobic and dangerous. It is actually a normal size for an alley, as opposed to a road. The claim that the alley is “dark” is simply a lie – there is no other word for it. Sgt. Lovell is clearly knowledgeable about that area, so must know perfectly well that the alley has superb street lighting that was installed circa 2007 when the new houses were built in the alley. If Sgt. Lovell were to give such a false statement to a court, either the judge or a defence barrister would absolutely rip her to shreds, so why does she think that it is acceptable to lie in a statement to the city council’s licensing department?
“Eastgate St is renowned for having the highest levels of antisocial behaviour incidents in the county. Between the 1st Jan 2013 and 12th June 2013 there were 158 police incidents around Eastgate St, with 69 crimes taking place.”
Well, that’s because the so-called NightSafe group has encouraged party people (i.e. drunken revellers) to frequent the area and has even closed the road off for them on Friday and Saturday nights, so that they are free to fight outside venues or fall into the road without getting run over by passing vehicles.
The crime figures suggest that there was little problem with Organ’s Alley prior to the closure of the road on Friday and Saturday nights. According to the statistics supplied to me by Gloucestershire Constabulary under a Freedom of Information request, there were two reported crimes in Organ’s Alley in the twelve months from June 2004 to May 2005, and then no more reported crimes till three in the twenty-four months from June 2011 to May 2013. According to Sgt. Lovell, these crimes were violence against the person, criminal damage, and robbery. While these are serious crimes, three crimes in Organ’s Alley over such a long period is not actually a particularly high number, especially considering the appallingly high level of crime generally in the Eastgate Street area. Remember, according to Sgt. Lovell, there were 69 crimes around Eastgate Street in a five-and-a-half month period! I suspect that many of the crimes were associated with the night-time economy of that area: a drunken person is not only more likely to commit crime, but also more likely to be the victim of crime. How will the closure of Organ's Alley have a statistically significant impact on the overall crime and anti-social behaviour figures for the Eastgate Street area?
One of the main problems in Organ’s alley seems to be urination:
This is the first 'issue' listed in Sgt. Lovell’s statement: “Urinating. Currently there are no public toilets available in this area.” Whose fault is that? Gloucester City Council has closed nearly all of the public toilets and replaced them with a community toilet scheme. Most of the toilets that are available during the day are unavailable at night. “Customers who are not allowed in venues, have been removed from venues, or simply do not want to use the long queues in the clubs and pubs, use the alleyway as a perfect area for relieving themselves.” Which club is right next to the alleyway? Butler’s Bar! I suggest that it is mainly their customers who are relieving themselves in the alleyway, probably after being thrown out of the bar for being troublesome.
There is no by-law in Gloucester making it an offence to urinate in public. I really think that there should be one. Information on the internet suggests that many cities do have such a by-law. In the absence of a by-law against urinating in public, the police find it difficult to deal with offenders. In order for a police officer to deal with an offender under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, it would have to be shown that the act of urinating in Organ’s Alley caused “harassment, alarm or distress” to someone within sight or hearing. It is a defence that a perpetrator “had no reason to believe that there was any person within sight or hearing who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”. While public urination is unpleasant, the claim that it could cause “harassment, alarm or distress” when carried out in an alleyway at night is pushing the bounds of Section 5 of the Public Order Act. That is the reason that it is imperative that a new by-law is made in Gloucester against public urination. By-laws can be policed by police officers, police community support officers and council officers, thus greatly increasing the number of people lawfully allowed to deal with the problem of urination in alleyways.
The next problem allegedly associated with Organ’s Alley is drugs:
Sgt. Lovell claims that police intelligence suggests that the alley has been used for drug dealing since 2008. However, there is evidence of only one arrest, on 6th January 2013. If drug dealing is rife in the alley, and there are plain clothed police operations in the city centre to catch drug dealers, and the alley is patrolled on every StreetSafe deployment, why has there been only one arrest in the alley? For some reason, that arrest doesn’t seem to have found its way onto the crime figures for the alley, as there are only three crimes recorded from June 2011 to May 2013. Did this arrest lead to a conviction? If not, why not?
“Intelligence has stated that offenders have attempted to avoid the drugs monitoring that Butler’s conduct on entry to their venue by going into the alleyway and throwing drugs over the fence to their colleagues in the beer garden at Butler’s. It has also been suggested that the same could take place for weapons etc.”
Well, these things could happen, but apparently no-one has ever actually been caught. Why not? Could CCTV help with this alleged problem? It would at least prove one way or the other whether criminals are, indeed, throwing items over the wall.
And so we come to the issue of CCTV:
Sgt. Lovell states: “There is no CCTV on this alleyway, and there is not any being provided on the upgrade of the city cctv, as there are other priority areas that are uncovered at present.” As soon as I read this statement, it seemed pretty unreasonable. If the alley is so bad that it requires a gating order, why would it not be a priority for CCTV? So I put in FoI requests to both the city council and the police to ask what these other priority areas were. The city council replied that, although it was unlikely that additional CCTV cameras would be installed, there might be opportunities for existing camera locations to be moved. These locations would be considered on a case by case basis. So I then made a request to the city council that Organ’s Alley should be considered as a new location for a CCTV camera. I am still awaiting a response to that request.
The police response to my FoI request about CCTV in Organ’s Alley read as follows:
“No information held. That is to say that the Force does not have any recorded information in relation to the priority areas for CCTV.
“The Inspector for Gloucester LPA has provided the below comment outside of the FOI act in order to assist:
“The City Centre CCTV is owned and maintained by the City Council and any decision making in relation to new cameras and the areas they will be lies with them.”
So, there you have it. CCTV is absolutely nothing to do with the police, and Sgt. Lovell must have gone well beyond her knowledge and remit in order to make the statement: “There is no CCTV on this alleyway, and there is not any being provided on the upgrade of the city cctv, as there are other priority areas that are uncovered at present.” It is up to Sgt. Lovell to justify this statement and provide evidence on these other priority areas, given that the Force claims officially to know nothing about the matter.
The implication that there is more criminality linked to Organ’s Alley than is recorded:
Both the city council and the police have attempted to imply that the crime and anti-social behaviour problem in Organ's Alley is somehow worse than anywhere else, and that the official figures don't paint the whole picture. However, it is surely the case for virtually any location that there is more crime and anti-social behaviour than ever gets recorded on official documents. Organ’s Alley is no different in this respect. Sgt. Lovell also claims, under the heading Police Analysts Research, that there is more criminality in Organ’s Alley that she can’t divulge because it “relates to intelligence which is protected” What absolute rot. Are we dealing with serious organised crime or international espionage here? The protected evidence probably relates to drugs, but you already know what I think of the claims about drugs – the police need to get out there and catch the culprits (as it appears that they did for one drug dealer on 6th January 2013).
Sgt. Lovell also claims that there is a lack of hard evidence in terms of crime reports because “the alleyway is not usually a reference point for incident logs or forms.” Why not? It is a named location, with eight residential buildings having the postal address of Organ’s Alley. Could it be that nearly every incident in that alleyway can be traced back to Butler’s Bar? Of course, I can’t prove this, but it does offer a logical explanation for the lack of recorded incidents in the alley itself. If a fight breaks out at Butler’s Bar and spills out into Eastgate Street and Organ’s Alley, the incident will be recorded as happening at Butler’s Bar. Similarly, if rowdy customers are ejected from Butler’s Bar, there is a chance that they will enter the alley and cause some sort of trouble. This is not in any way the fault of Organ’s Alley.
In my opinion, the root of the problem lies in the whole attitude that the authorities have to drunkenness and anti-social behaviour in the Eastgate Street area on Friday and Saturday nights. The whole object of NightSafe seems to be make revellers feel safe, rather than to make Gloucester city centre a nice place for those of us who don't want to get smashed out of our minds. The council and the police both need to get much tougher with all forms of anti-social behaviour in the Eastgate Street area, including giving out fines.
Gating one alley will simply move the problems elsewhere:
The police have recently taken to issuing drunk and disorderly people with Section 27 notices under the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. These are specific to alcohol related disorder in public places, and require the individual to leave a locality for up to 48 hours. About a dozen of these notices are being issued each weekend in the Eastgate Street area (according to a report in The Citizen). They can work for a particular area, but what about the roads that the excluded people take on their way back home? Do drunken people act reasonably while walking back home? I think that there may be a reason why the shops in Barton Street have had their windows smashed more frequently in recent weeks.
I think that it is useful at this point to compare the treatment of reported incidents in a particular part of Barton with those in Organ's Alley. There were a total of seven incidents reported to police in Organ's Alley from the beginning of 2012 to mid-June 2013; these consisted of three crimes, a report of a fight, something to do with 'BHC monitoring' (whatever that is) and dumped bicycles. In contrast, Napier Street in Barton (which has a small play area) had about 70 incidents reported to police in 2012 according to reports in The Citizen. The Citizen articles didn't say how many of these were given crime numbers by the police, but 70 incidents of anti-social behaviour in one small area in 12 months is quite a lot, you've got to admit. It seems that, after a huge effort by the police (including the use of a mosquito device at night, and the setting up of a youth club for the bored Czech youths), the troublesome youths were finally ousted from the play area...and they simply went to St. James' Park in Tredworth, which isn't that far away, and continued their anti-social behaviour. My main point, once again, is that banning criminals and other troublesome people from a particular area will result in their committing their crimes and anti-social acts elsewhere.
One of the really odd things about the evidence in favour of a gating order that I received from the city council under the FoI request is that not one of the people who lives in Organ's Alley cares enough about the proposed gating order to fill in a consultation form to support the order. Only eight local people support the gating order, and not one actually lives in the alley; three either live or have a business on either side of the Eastgate Street entrance to the alley; five live in the area, but would not be affected by the alleged problems in the alley.
I object to the proposed gating order on Organ's Alley.
Yours faithfully,
Kay Powell.
