Community action against crime

Joan Parrott: We had ASB problems about four years ago. It started off with the youths playing football and the ball hitting the car all the time and it cracked my son’s window screen. My son confronted them and they got their elder brothers and one night my son was around his girlfriend’s, I was here all on my own and I was looking out of my son’s bedroom window and there were all youths downstairs with baseball bats screaming come out and one night my neighbour knocked at the door and the car was one alight.

I wanted to take action because I was a victim of ASB before that but when it started up four years again with these boys, I didn’t want to go through what I went through before because I felt alone, I felt frightened, I was worried everytime my son went out and it’s just no way to live.

I got involved with the ASB panel because I think victims get a raw deal and there’s a lot of people out there that are in misery because they’re living with people bullying them and causing nuisance and they just don’t know where to turn.

Julie Brown: People like Joan are very very important in the community and very important to us.  You know she takes the bull by the horns, she’s not frightened to put herself forward, in fact in some things we’ve had to sort of like stop her, you know she was quite prepared to go and do a door knock all on her own and you know ‘tell me, tell me, I’ll give you my name, I’ll give you my address.’ You know we’ve had to pull the reigns in a little bit because she’s just so wanting to make this a really better area to live.

Mojaz Ahed: I think Joan has a lot of input in what residents have had because she lives in the ward as well. And she’s very community spirited and she’s very community focused as well.  You’ll see her attending youth centres, link centres, to engage with the community and I think that helps us a lot to understand why residents are facing problems in the ward.

Roger Harris: I’m pleased to say that in the last two or three years with the help of the anti-social behaviour committee plus having the safer neighbourhood team based with us, it has now come down to almost nil. You’ll never solve the problem completely but people like to live on the Lincoln estate now.

Joan Parrott: I’d give the advice to anyone that wants to do what I do, if you’ve got a housing association or council speak to someone there, see if there’s anything you can do there.  It’s good when you help other people and you know that they ain’t going to suffer the way that I suffered.

Date: Wed Jul 28 15:16:49 BST 2010