I have always felt comfortable where I live. It doesn’t have a high crime rate and I am happy that the children are safe to play outside.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been issues – I am pretty sure that there are problems wherever you live. Rowdy teenagers with nothing better to do than hang around on street corner and doodling offensive comments onto play equipment, or the boy racers hanging around in their souped up Fiesta’s, revving their engines thinking they’re cool!
The last month, however, seems to have escalated into an apparent crime spree in our area.
We have had torched play equipment in the park behind our house, which is incredibly frustrating as the local residents and children worked incredibly hard to secure funding to update the play equipment in our local area, after it was withdrawn by the government.
We have also had a torched car, which I have no idea if it is related.
Yesterday, our local area was surrounded by police and under a Police helicopter for much of the day and night, for what turned out to be an armed rapist on the run, who had been spotted locally.
We had a knock on the door at around 19.30 by a police officer to ask if we had heard screams in the park behind our house. To be honest, I hear them all the time, but that is because there is a BMX track there so in the day it’s kids and at night it is the local teens who hang around.
I didn’t think much of it until I started looking into what had happened, and I genuinely felt frightened, despite checking the windows and doors were locked and having hubby at home. In fact it took me two hours to get to sleep as I was concerned.
The story so far: Bournemouth Echo Live Updates
The helicopters started up again this morning, and sirens on the school run didn’t help the nerves, but I am relieved that they no longer think he is in this neck of the woods. That said, I hope he is caught very very soon.
My one question is: This man has offended before, gone on the run before……..so what the bloody hell was he doing roaming free on our streets?
Isn’t is sickening? I don’t understand why they do it. You always hear the argument that its because they’re bored and need more services to keep them entertained but do they really deserve them if this is the lack of respect they have? When I was a kid I wouldn’t have gone to a youth club anyway! You’d have lost serious street cred.