Residents in St Mary’s are hoping a violent assault at the end of last week does not mark the start of an ongoing escalation of the area’s gang problem.
The problem with the older youths has shifted around the St Mary’s area as the teenagers responsible are moved on from one location to another. As the authorities clamp down in one street, the youths simply move their activities to a different part of the estate.
”They were getting problems in St Ninian Terrace, but then the ASBO team and the police moved in and dealt with it so they moved on,” said Alice. ”Then it was St Boswells but now that is relatively quiet, too.
”They are just displaced the problem starts in one area and then it is moved on to a new area and unfortunately the youths have now chosen the park.”
Although Friday night’s attack was the first, the youths hanging around the area are known to intimidate local residents.
”My understanding is that the man who was assaulted was coming home from a night out and the youths shouted at him and he shouted back,” said Mrs Bovill.
”If there are 10-12 kids shouting at you, you don’t shout back. I’m not frightened, but I am not that brave that I would shout back at a group of kids.
”Up to now they have just been a general nuisance, shouting and throwing stones, and this is the first time that they have been fuelled up enough to attack somebody.”
Despite the difficulties, Mrs Bovill believes the community is strong enough to beat the problem.
”St Mary’s is not a bad area,” she said. ”It is now an area where people want to stay and we have very few empty houses. People want houses up here because they know there is nothing wrong with the area it is just unfortunately a few people.
”I don’t think it will put people off because at the moment it is being treated as an isolated case.”
As a member of the children’s panel, Mrs Bovill has plenty of experience in dealing with troubled and troublesome teens.
”This has to be nipped in the bud,” she said. ”If I knew this assault had happened and I had a child who was out at that time I would be asking them where they were and what they were doing and if they had seen anything.”
Locals say they are keeping their fingers crossed Friday’s brutal assault by a teenage gang was an isolated event.
”It is scary if you can’t go out and walk about,” said Alice Bovill of the St Mary’s Association of Residents and Tenants. ”We have been aware for a long time of youths throwing stones and annoying people, but we have never actually had any assaults this is the first one.”
She was speaking after a 48-year-old man was attacked by a gang of about 10 youths thought to age between 13 and 15 on Friday night.
The youths started harassing the man near the St Kilda Road playpark, before chasing him through side streets and assaulting him with sticks.
The park is popular with local families, but has become a magnet for a gang of youths after dark, prompting fears they could turn on younger children.
The gang’s activities in the park could soon be curtailed, though, Mrs Bovill revealed.
”We are in talks to see if we can get security lights up on the side of the church building, which would also light up the park so that the youths will be in full view and won’t be able to hide in the shadows,” she said.
”They seem to hang about for a certain time and are gone by 10 o’clock presumably that’s when their parents tell them they have to be home.”
She said a cheerleading group on Friday evening was disrupted by a bunch of younger children aged 11-13, running through the centre and slamming doors. With hindsight, it seems likely they were displaced from the park by the older group of youths, she said.
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