Gordon Brown vists Camden estate as "Police do nothing where women attacked".

Gordon Brown made an unannounced visit to a Camden council estate in Gospel Oak. A gran told Gordon how she defended herself and her granddaughter with a baseball bat when 60 male youths chased her, tried to set her on fire, sabotaged her garden and threatened her granddaughter. Gordon visited as people have complained about failed ASBOS and the CNJ reported a lack of faith in police.

The Camden New Journal makes the report here.

http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2009/101509/news101509_01.html

The woman on the Kiln estate in Gospel Oak said that she has had enough after "doing everything properly, reporting things to the authoroties" etc. Nothing was done to help her and she came out with a bat and defended herself her granddaughter and her home.

On a northern UK estate a woman was jailed after she fired at youths with a BB gun [they weren't hit or hurt] after years of abuse from them. Recently the mainstream newspapers reported how a mother killed both herself and her daughter after ten years of torment from a group of men.

What kind of society or police "service" looks the other way when women are continously abused by groups of men? Too often the women are the ones arrested or ticked off and warned by police when they defend themselves againt violent men. Another Camden woman was threatened with arrest for harrassment when a group of men started an intimidation campaign. A petrified woman who was screaming with fear during a domestic violence incident in Gospel Oak was arrested for breach of the peace, for screaming in terror while being chased. She had been traumatised during war in Somalia and then had the trauma of violent man to deal with but the abuse from Camden Police was the last straw. Old people have told the Camden New Journal that they are too scared to walk down Camden High Street in the evenings following abuse from men hanging around. The elderly people said that the men were drug dealers and that they were so afraid of them that they won't go out but the police are "worse than useless", so they stay in when they want to get fresh air, take a walk in town, visit friends, go to a restaurant or go shopping. They simply stay in which isn't fair.
One woman against 60 youths who congregate in her garden every night is something most people living in nice places cannot even begin to comprehend. This is every day reality for the woman who was left with no option but to use a bat to defend herself and a young female relative.
For anyone living in Gospel Oak you will know that this is very dismal estate. It it is like a huge rabbit warren. There isn't much for young people to do which is what leads to them getting angry, frustrated and bored and taking this out on the neighbours. ASBOs are not the answer. I suppose that Camden Council will come with some ingeniuos car parking scam to somehow get some money together to get Gospel Oak sorted out. Meanwhile Camden's Police Service will be hiding out at a bus stop somewhere in groups of fifty to catch people who haven't got a bendy bus ticket. [They love Warren Street / Bayham Street / Holloway Road ....just so you know]. They will also jump out at Camden Town Tube station to search [grope] terrified female tourists who have been caught by a sniffer dog for a having a blim's worth of hash stuck to their shoe or something.
We could just all just go out and get some bats and cause mayhem. [Only kidding]. So, what will Gordon do we ask?

Sarah Sceptical

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Lame selective reporting

15.10.2009 23:29

I have had a dozen or so dealings with the police living in London for 10 years. My experiences have always been positive. Picking a random incident like this based on here-say is lame.

Ruby

I agree with Sarah

16.10.2009 09:00

Though I do accept that Ruby has a point to be fair about the police being very good sometimes to victims, especially when the "victim" is a multinational company behind layers of razor wire with lots of security. The police and CPS and judiciary are erratic and often contradictory. Whilst animal rights activists are serving double figure sentences and no expense is spared in prosecuting, rapists and those who kill found guilty of "manslaughter" serve a fraction comparatively. The people trafficking team at the Met has had its budget slashed to a paltry £3,000,000 to investigate accross borders and deal with murderous scum who think nothing of using a frightened teenage sex slave in a snuff movie.
I also agree with Sarah that if the police do not wish to deal with those who terrify old folk and make sport out of kicking, punching and stabbing their neighbours they should stand back and allow communities to defend themselves. Quite simply the Fiona Pilkington fiasco would have been brought to an abrupt halt if neighbours had got together en masse, given the family one chance to stop and then unleashed hell on them if they continued. You smash Fiona's window, we smash yours, you taunt her, we taunt you but we are stronger and if necessary we will hurt you. Of course the police hate vigilantes but what choice is there in this situation? At least if action is taken communities get stronger, maybe even the bullies who may be very young find it benificial and at least learn that there are consequences for bullying and not nice ones. If the police, CPS and courts can not or will not protect people (and let's face it their remit is to protect power), if there is no real sanction through sentencing people have to protect themselves or be ruled by those who are utterly amoral.

Lynn Sawyer

Couldn't have said it better myself

16.10.2009 12:19

Great post Lynn, absolutely spot on.

Kitsune

Bollocks

16.10.2009 12:28

Damn we missed giving Brown a piece of our minds. That part of Camden doesn't lack cops - it lacks resources. Gospel Oak estates are sandwiched between the Heath and it middle class housing and Kentish Town Road. They look like the land that time forgot - shops closed, everything fucked. On top of which the kids that hang around get harrassed endlessly by so-called community police, of which there are plenty.

It may sound ultraleft but I was well cheered to read in the CNJ that some estates (Peckwater and maybe Gospel Oak) have become no-go areas because the kids are sick of the cops and have taken to stoning them everytime they turn up!

local

Police & council have turned Regents Park & Somers Town estates into open prison

16.10.2009 15:26

I agree with all these posts. While upper class and middle class people including students can do whatever they like nearby, young people on the estates are punished for being young and working class. The whole area around Somers Town and Regents Park estaes has recently become a dispersal zone meaning that groups of more than two people can be dispersed and are at threat of being given an ASBO. The youth club isn't open yet, the New Horizons Youth Centre is not yet open. Young people are now not allowed to use green open spaces to meet with friends, get fresh air, go for a walk, excersie their dogs or do anything at all. The council and police have launced a punishment attack on young men with dogs on estates. Dogs are being taken from mostly young black and mixed race young men whether or not there has been any incident, most of the dogs [99.9%] have done nothing wrong.
ASBOs are not the solution for the problems here. Gospel Oak, Peckwater, Maiden Lane, Clarence Way, Denton, Somers Town and Regnts Park estates are deprived and punished. The estates are becoming open prisons where young people are expected to live like caged animals.

Lynn is also right. The police look the other way when scum and perverts rape people, intimidate women, break into people's homes, murder prostitutes including trafficked girls and women, force girls and women onto the game, abuse people etc. When women fight back the police come down harder on them than they do on the scum that prey on them in the first place. Camden Police have a culture and policy of misogyny that is breathtaking. Most local people believe them to be corrupt.

Most of Camden's young people especially young black males [even more so if they are Somalian, Ethiopean and Eritrean] have been given ASBOs banning them from Camden High Street. The police have claimed that they were "selling drugs". Most people living here know that this is a shit and laughable "excuse / reason".

The ASBOs barring young people from Camden's estates from using Camden High Street, from meeting up with their mates on the estates green spaces etc need to be lifted. Money needs to be spent on making the place better and women need more and better facilities. Sex workers need to be able to work safely and not for evil men who lock them away and hurt them - these young girls and women are ignored while nothing is done to help them
.
Camden is a mess and the police are at fault for much of it.

Turning the etates into ASBO zones / open prisons is not a solution. Barring Camden's young people from Camden Town is not a solution. [Whiel middle class students can run around doing what they like....]

Camden is on the brink of riots, make no mistake. People have had enough.

Mandy
Homepage: http://www.myspace.com/stopcamdenanimallab

P.S. - Ruby you are a twat.

16.10.2009 16:01

When I said agree with all the posts when it come to you I am with Lynn. The police do indeed have special friends and you Ruby are clearly one of them.

Camden has come under the spotlight recently because of the downright stupid plans to build a deadly germ lab / animal testing lab on A CAMDEN COUNCIL HOUSE ESTATE.

One of the solutions the council has come up with is to knock down / sell of flats and replace them with student accomodation and houses for posh people.

If you are female sex worker, trafficked woman, someone forced to work in the sex industry or has chosent to work in the sex industry, are a refugee [whether or not in sex work], have been raped or sexually abused and want advice then you can got to the English Collective of Prostitutes advice centre at 230a Kentish Town Road in Camden. The drop in is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the afternoons. The centre is for all women at risk of abuse...you don't have to be a prostitute to go there for help.

I'm not joking when I say that Camden is close to kicking off because of the way young people, in fact all people on estates are being treated. Enough is enough.

Mandy
Homepage: http://www.myspace.com/stopcamdenanimallab

Camen High Street gang

16.10.2009 19:45

Most of them don't live at camden. They come from east london to camden but the peeps from camden are not allowed to be on the camden high street.
Most of the man from eats london are from gambia and come to uk from gambia to sell the weed.
there is more up by jack brody shop on camden high street, across of jamestown road, one who is a crack head junkie who's disrespectful to all people walking by

camden is under severe conditions where people can't walk into town but these men from outside the borough can do what they want.

its wrong as the police are looking to buy drugs like that robocop, the drugs dealers are their friends if that is the case and they wont care how many old folk they abuse or how many women they rape and put in snuff movies if they are involved with drugs they will just want there fix and leave the dealers to do what they want

Local

Yes, fight back!

16.10.2009 22:15

Mandy