It's curtains for crime in Dundee

Further to last week's post about claims that crime and anti-social behaviour has turned Dundee's Charleston area into a slum, Lord Provost John Letford - who lives in the area - has described the claims as "upsetting", and says most Charlestonians(?) are "lovely" but that some aren't quite so lovely. Mr Letford continues his devastating insight by shifting the onus...er...reminding people of their responsibility not to shut their curtains:

The only people I have a problem with are those who don't co-operate or those who turn a blind eye. We shouldn't shut the curtains and say 'It's nothing to do with me.' If we all work together and no one is turning a blind eye then we can change it.

Cynics might pooh-pooh this as a charter for curtain twitchers*, but a mere couple of days later and another Dundee City councillor had clearly taken on board the LP's words. In response to a vandalism spree in the city's Stobswell area involving seventy vehicles, Councillor Ken Lynn said:

It's such a hard one to police, but I thought about the idea of a neighbourhood watch [sic], where everybody takes a turn just sitting watching what's going on through the window.

Gosh. Has Kenny MacAskill heard this? Will it be in the next SNP manifesto? Are the 1,000 extra police officers really irrelevant, and the cuts won't matter? Or is this mere window dressing (boom, boom)?

Of course, this civic responsibility malarkey is all very well, but part of the problem is that many members of the public feel it's the police and other authorities who turn a blind eye, thus public confidence is lost and in turn they turn a blind eye and a vicious circle develops. Indeed, the LP alluded to this himself when he said:

Previously the priority of the police has not been the same as the priority of the people in the community. But over the last five or six years they have recognised that vandalism and intimidation are really important to people who live in these areas.

But have official attitudes really changed? It should be recalled that last week one resident of Charleston said:

I don't think anybody acts on anything. You don't see the police because they don't turn up. They just don't show up for anti-social behaviour or for fights. The whole scheme is just becoming a slum and the only people we can speak to about it are not doing anything. We're fed up of hearing about councillors, police and ASBOs - that's why we called this meeting.

And as I said a year ago when the LP last reminded residents of their civic responsibilities, surely one problem is the crackdown/Community Engagement Team sort of culture, which might reassure residents when it's happening, but what about when police are not cracking/clamping down or the Team is engaging with another community? To that extent these clampdowns are mere charm offensives, and insofar as the public recognise this it doesn't reassure them.

"This can't go on," says Councillor Lynn. Well this certainly can, as well as the platitudes. As I said last week, it was certainly appropriate that his SNP colleague Craig Mellville said that the authorities would "never give up" on these matters in the Stobswell area, because they seem never ending. And the irony of the vandalism spree in the area a mere few days later is presumably not lost on Councillor Melville.

*Strictly speaking, the term 'curtain twitcher' seems to presuppose that the curtains are closed, but the LP suggests leaving them open, thus pedants might spot a slight contradiction, but you get my drift, presumably!