It's not petty

He wants York's streets cleaned up, not only of litter and graffiti, but also of thuggish behaviour. And he's calling on everyone to play their part - police, council, and local communities.

Coun Galloway says his York Pride campaign is about setting boundaries about what is acceptable. Then it is up to everybody to ensure these boundaries are complied with.

He makes no apology for his planned visit to Middlesbrough next month to study the methods of controversial mayor Ray "Robocop" Mallon, the man credited with introducing New York-style "zero tolerance" policing to the North East.

"It's not that we're on some sort of 'zero tolerance' ego trip," Coun Galloway says, "because there are enormous dangers and costs involved in that. But the idea of setting boundaries of acceptable behaviour within a free and tolerant society goes together very well with the technique of saying certain things are not acceptable which is espoused by Ray Mallon."

The call to arms from York's new leader comes not before time. According to York police chief Supt John Lacy, crime figures expected to be revealed soon will show that while police have made progress in tackling crimes such as burglary in the past year, cases of anti-social behaviour - thuggishness, petty assault, drunken abuse - have risen.

This rise may partly be due to new Home Office crime-counting rules, but it will come as no surprise to many. The Evening Press headlines for the last couple of weeks reveal a catalogue of petty crime and vandalism of the sort that should not be happening in a city like York - shops in Huntington daubed with graffiti; half-built homes in Acomb repeatedly vandalised; new paper banks set on fire; louts smashing the lights on York's Millennium Bridge.

What happened to Evening Press journalist Richard Foster is typical. He was cycling home beside the River Ouse after work when four young men launched an unprovoked assault on him.

He had veered to one side of the joint cycle and pedestrian path to pass them. "And as I did that, the guy nearest me just lashed out and hit me in the face," he says.

He wasn't seriously injured apart from a gash to the face. "But why should people be allowed to get away with it?" he says. "It blights the quality of life in this city."

Coun Galloway agrees: "If we take pride in our city, then we cannot be tolerant of crime no matter how petty."

So what is to be done? Supt Lacy admits the police, who have to concentrate on offences such as burglary, drugs offences and violent assault, are struggling to cope with petty crime. North Yorkshire Police's call-handling centre sometimes fields as many as 15,000 calls a week, he points out.

"It is about sheer demand," he says. "I greatly regret that the demands on us are such that we cannot deal with every single incident as effectively as we would like."

True, the police have just been given a massive budget increase and have pledged to put more officers on the beat. But it takes time - at least 12 months - to recruit and train new police officers, Supt Lacy points out.

In the meantime, a number of new measures have been introduced to increase police visibility. First there were ward officers - police officers responsible for a particular ward of the city who work with local communities to tackle local crime.

Now it is community support officers - uniformed support staff who will patrol the city's streets with limited police powers to stop and search vehicles, confiscate alcohol and issue on-the-spot tickets for litter, cycling on footpaths and dog fouling.

There are 13 such officers for York and Selby - and they have been introduced to help tackle petty crime, Supt Lacy says.

Nevertheless, the police cannot go it alone, he adds. They need the support of the community.

Which is where Coun Galloway's York Pride "intolerance campaign" comes in. It is a multi-pronged approach which aims to tackle not only loutish behaviour and petty criminality, but also the decline in the appearance of York's streets. The two, Coun Galloway points out, are linked: give people back a pride in their streets and it will be harder for louts to get away with acts of petty vandalism.

Part of the approach involves a higher-visibility street presence. From this month, the council will be deploying six new, uniformed "street scene officers", whose job will be to patrol the city keeping an eye out for graffiti, litter and potential problems.

They will be the "eyes and ears" of the council, Coun Galloway says, and taken together with the new police community support officers and the "community rangers" - private security patrols operating in most city wards - will greatly increase the uniformed presence on York's streets.

The second strand involves providing more activities for young people. This summer the council will be launching the biggest ever programme of events and activities for young people under its OASIS scheme, ranging from basketball camps, sub aqua and canoeing to dance, mask-making and music and film workshops.

More long-term, the council is investigating setting up youth "drop-in" centres at locations across the city. "Somewhere to hang out inside as opposed to on the street corner," Coun Galloway says.

The third strand involves enforcement. The council is considering employing freelance "professional witnesses" to gather evidence against council "neighbours from hell" and assist in eviction proceedings.

Senior council staff will be meeting with magistrates to talk about the possibility of using the powers of the courts more effectively, through, for example, issuing more antisocial behaviour orders.

Portable surveillance cameras could also be temporarily mounted in problem areas to gather evidence and identify culprits.

Allied to all of these measures is a call for the people of York to take more responsibility for their own environment - and a pledge that the council itself will do better.

Gone are the days when a burned-out car will be allowed to sit on the street for weeks on end. "If there is a broken seat that has been there for 12 hours, we want people to think 'nothing has been done about that, I will ring and find out why'," says Coun Galloway. "I'm not saying every grass verge will be manicured, but we should be able to aspire to something better."

And if that entails cutting through council red tape so as to respond more quickly, so be it. "We've got to sweep away all that," he says. "We've got to be prepared sometimes to take some risks and say 'yes, we will do something'."

If he can achieve even that much, it will be a good start.

What do you think?

Write to Readers' Letters, Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York, or email letters@ycp.co.uk

Updated: 11:47 Wednesday, July 02, 2003