PC Danny Nelson (left) and PCSO Harry Bradley out on patrol
By Eleanor Lawrie
Social affairs reporter, BBC News
Targeted anti-social behaviour patrols are being rolled out across England and Wales from April, with at least £1m funding given to each of the 43 police forces.
BBC News went out with Lancashire Police on a trial patrol in Brunswick, Blackpool, where a small team of officers have spent the past eight months making inroads with the community.
Lynn ushers us out of the rain and into her house in Blackpool’s Brunswick neighbourhood, one of the most deprived parts of England.
It’s a close-knit community of red brick terraced streets, under the shadow of Blackpool Tower.
Half of those aged 16 and over are unemployed or economically inactive, while about one in three children live in poverty.
Lynn was devastated when her mobility scooter was stolen from outside her local shop before being dumped at the railway station.
“I was ever so upset because that’s how I get about – I can’t go out without it. It felt like heaven getting it back,” she says.
The police helped track down her scooter using CCTV and the help of the local community on Facebook.
“They’ve been absolutely marvellous. They are always available to chat about anything you’re worried about. And they always ask me how my little dog is,” she says.
Lynn’s mobility scooter was stolen from outside a local shop
Residents ‘scared to walk to cars’
For PC Danny Nelson, this friendly approach is key to “Operation Centurion”, in which the same officers repeatedly patrol this small pocket of the town, a crime hotspot.
The officers are ring-fenced and cannot be taken off to assist with other, more serious incidents elsewhere.
Anti-social behaviour had become one of the neighbourhood’s most common complaints.
“If we went back a year ago, before [Operation] Centurion started, this would be a terrifying area, even for police to attend. We had a minimum of four to five calls a day, just for youth anti-social behaviour,” PC Nelson says.
“Residents were saying they didn’t want to come out at night. They’re scared to just walk to their cars, scared to meet with their own community, with their friends and families.
“Doctors at the Sure Start Centre didn’t want to go out to their own cars parked 20-30ft (7-9m) away from the door – they’re that worried that they’re going to be attacked.”
PC Nelson says the area used to be “terrifying”
The next stop is a cup of tea and a chat with the Boys and Girls club, a local after-school centre for children as young as eight.
A boy aged about 11, with his hoodie pulled up, pokes his head around the door and sees the officers chatting to one of the staff. He nods shyly in their direction.
That child was responsible for a fair amount of the anti-social behaviour going on around here, PC Nelson confides, but says he is now more receptive and sometimes even challenges the officers to a game at the club’s pool table.
‘First name’ policing
In some ways, of course, the initiative is not new at all but a return to the “Bobby on the beat” style policing of the last century.
“People are saying ‘I don’t know my local officer’,” says PC Nelson, adding: “OK, well, let’s bring it back to basics and let’s get to know each other.
“Let’s have the local people in the community engaging on a first name basis of going ‘oh, that’s my local officer. I know what he can do for me, I know what he’s done in the past – and I know, now this operation is in full swing, we can come together’.”
Not everyone agrees. We meet Elle, 18, helping to paint a mural outside the club. She tells the officers she had her phone stolen on New Year’s Eve by someone she knew.
Teenager Elle says she doesn’t think anything will change
She says she thinks the police are “trying” but adds: “Nothing’s really going to change Blackpool.”
But figures suggest the patrols, piloted in 10 areas of the country, have actually helped cut many types of anti-social behaviour.
Between July and December 2023, recorded incidents of theft in Brunswick dropped by 14%, and drug offences by a quarter. Criminal damage, arson and public order offences almost halved.
Victim without a crime
However, these new patrols may not provide much comfort for some.
Of the 10,000 anti-social behaviour victims helped by Victim Support last year, 81% had been told their experience did not meet the criminal threshold.
That is because some of the most common types of anti-social behaviour, such as neighbour disputes and verbal harassment, are not always logged as a crime, meaning victims are not entitled to support.
That is what happened to Ian, who lives 40 miles away from Brunswick in a West Lancashire village.
The aircraft engineer says he has not allowed visitors to his home for over a year after walking into a “nightmare” dispute with his elderly neighbour, who he says shouts often violent abuse and bangs on the adjoining wall all hours of the day and night.
His now ex-partner moved out amid the strain and he regularly sleeps in his car to get away from the noise.
Ian’s neighbour, he says, is convinced he is secretly running a laundrette from his home and that she can hear noisy machines through the wall.
He has called the police five or six times, he says, but they tell him they’re unable to help, partly because of his neighbour’s vulnerabilities.
“The police investigate, go round and visit and decide it’s not a criminal act,” he says, continuing: “The council say, actually, some of this stuff might be a threat to kill. It’s a police matter.
“So, we had maybe six months of toing and froing between police and the council, trying to find someone to take responsibility.”
He says while initiatives like Operation Centurion are important, they are not the whole story.
“It’s the graffiti, it’s the real criminal behaviour out on the streets. However, what you also have is some underlying anti-social behaviour that’s more chronic, it’s more ongoing, that really impacts people’s lives in the long term, but isn’t visible to the public.”
Ian’s council says it takes anti-social behaviour very seriously.
Charity Victim Support and others are calling for the Victims and Prisoners bill, currently going through parliament, to recognise people like Ian as victims and give them an automatic right to support.
“Amending the Bill to include victims of non-criminal anti-social behaviour would grant them access to the same rights as other victims,” Victim Support chief executive Katie Kempen says.
She adds: “As things stand, support is a postcode lottery – but there are thousands of people up and down the country whose lives have been devastated.”
