Re: Problems with wall-hoppers Date: August 25, 2010 04:54PM |
there is a lot of internet discussion recording a lot of unwelcome trouble making in the area from belarmine to the gallops, I am copying one below from the belarmine.com site after observing some 13-16 year olds who may not have been local but appeared to know some local youngsters though the schools, unpleasantly hassling some very very young children on the upper green at sandyford hall, parents of teenagers in the 13 to 16 years bracket, PLEASE TALK TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT POSSIBLE ANTISOCIAL CHOICES,
Hi all,
last week we received numerous emails concerning the youth activity in our reason and therefore we decided to publish one of them right here on our website. IF you believe that you could help us tackle this problem, please do come in forward and send us an email. All information will be kept strictly confidential. (To protect the person who sent this letter, we have decided to publish it as anonymous.)
I am a local resident and have been living in Belarmine 18 months now.
Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a group of 15 – 20 youths aged between 13 – 16 years old that are hanging around outside the shop/plaza and later at night in the playground. On Tuesday 15th June I was in the shop and these youths came in (most of them drunk) and started trouble, giving customers and the staff grief. As I was leaving the store I observed Dennis a member of staff from The Market run out after one of these lads, i looked behind me and seen that this lad had a bottle of wine concealed under his jumper, he ran off and Dennis returned to the shop. Around the corner on the main road in the estate in front of Belarmine Hall these young lads started arguing between themselves and one of them pulled out a nearly empty bottle of white wine from his tracksuit bottoms, he then threatened a younger fella with it and said he would smash it off his face. At this point a woman and I intervened, this woman started shouting at them because there was kids playing there and they eventually they moved on. The same group were outside The Plaza on Wednesday.
I work in the security industry and I fear that these young lads might be coming from different estates because they might think The Market is an easy place to steal alcohol from as there is not much of a staff presence in the off license section nor do they employ a retail security officer.
I just wanted to make you aware of this as I would not like this situation get worse, there should be more of a Garda presence in the estate, after all loitering is a criminal offence, It would be great if we could look at setting up a neighbourhood watch scheme and involve the Gardai, we could talk about any issues residents are having, e.g attempted burglaries that have been happening in the apartment blocks, cars been broken into and damaged etc.. If this carry on is not stamped out our beautiful, quiet estate will be ruined. I would not be surprised if it was this group that damaged the gate in the playground preventing our local children from playing together for weeks.
I would appreciate any feedback and if we could raise awareness to stamp out this drunken loitering/vandalism that is happening in our community.
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The problem is growing every day and i was left stunned by the ignorance of the youth myself at the Market where the store staff had 2 different encounters with the young lads and both of them ended in calling the Guards on the scene. If someone knows how to tackle with the your lads or has any suggestions, please do come in forward: info@belarmineplaza.com.
Yours,
Johnny
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