Untitled Document

Aware of quite a few anti social behaviours such as alcohol and drug related types. Mostly we tend to be dealing with younger people and the problems that they cause. At the moment there is a big problem with boy racers driving around late at night, just generally being a nuisance. Twenty years ago when kids were playing football in a car park the police would be called to ask them to keep the noise down. Nowadays the general public are wanting the police to move them even if they are not causing any harm.

How much of police time does anti social behaviour take up?

What you have to remember is that anti social behaviour is a crime. Most people see it as a type of behaviour but in fact it is no different from other crimes. This means that it does take up quite a substantial amount of police time. I would say 60% to 70% of our time is taken up by anti social behaviour of some type.

Is there a particular age group that causes the most anti social behaviours?

Again we tend to see mostly younger people carrying out anti social behaviour. However the oldest person to get an ASBO was 60 years old. We tend to be more understanding of elderly people compared to the young ones. Elderly ASBO’s tend to be one offs whereas younger people are more likely to have continuous offences.

Do you think is a particular time of day/night that anti social behaviour occurs?

This depends really on what type of anti social behaviour your talking about. For example we have given out ASBO’s for shoplifting. Obviously to shop lift they would only be able to do this during the shop opening hours. At weekends there is more alcohol related problems, which is to be expected. These can occur throughout the night as people stay up to all manner of hours.

Dundee is a very student populated city what anti social behaviours do you associate with them?

We expect all the typical student behaviours. Obviously with students we know that there is an alcohol and drug culture. They tend to do trivial things such as knocking off a policeman’s hat and stealing signs. Most of the time we are called to a crime committed by a student and more often or not it turns out that it was just a prank. We know that the students are here to work hard, get a degree and then move forward in life. So we know that they are just having fun and when they past this stage in life they will calm down. I know that when I was working in the West end of the city I had to deal with students regularly. I tended to be less vigilant with students and understanding.

Do you know of any existing anti social behaviour campaigns?

I don’t think there really has been any anti social behaviour campaigns in the media that I am aware of. I know in the police there is pressure to crack down on anti social behaviour. For example the first minister is keen to use dispersal orders, so when he looks at the police figures and sees that we have not issued any, he begins to question why this is. This puts pressure on the police to show that they are using the right procedures to crack down on anti social behaviour. One way that seems to be having effect on anti social behaviour is penalty fines. Tayside police are allowed to issue an on the spot fine of £40. This can be issued for any number of reasons such as causing noise, vandalism and so on. The person can even be arrested and spend a night in the cell then be issued with the fine. The fine does not go on your record. The reason this seems to be working is that it has an immediate impact. Instead of the culprit waiting 3 months for a court hearing they are given this fine, which has to be paid in a month. This means that they cannot forget about it.

Do you think an awareness campaign would be effective?

A. No I don’t think it would be. The problem with campaigns is you tend to stereotype when using pictures. If you use an image that has a picture of a young male being aggressive then people assume that’s what anti social behaviour is. When in fact it is a huge number of things.