A BUSINESS owner on the Stewartstown Road has described the recent upsurge in anti-social behaviour as “chaos” stating that his staff have been verbally abused, that both staff and customers have been intimidated and that there has been an increase in shoplifting.
Speaking with the Andersonstown News, the business owner said that while most young people are "great kids" they are having problems with one group in particular.
“It’s been chaos. I feel like we are left on our own and left to deal with it. There’s not much getting done about it. We’ve got plenty of letters, we had calls round from both the police and the council.
“I can’t expect my team in the evening to go out and deal with 50-plus kids, the abuse my staff has taken over the past number of years has been absolutely wild. We’ve had staff leaving who can’t take it anymore."
One staff member pleaded with the youths to stop and that their actions were putting customers off coming to the premises, she was met with verbal abuse including comments about her physical appearance.
“They’re at the age where they have their own train of thought, their own opinions. They need to be sensible enough to realise that they’re not doing a good thing for their own community, it’s their area.
“Most of the kids who have done this also shoplift in our store. It’s insane. It’s ridiculous. Recently, within the space of an hour and a half we had five different kids from the area all stealing the same thing. All tins of juice and bars of chocolate.
“Now it is just a select element of the community, it is only a certain number of kids. We have some great kids that come in and their manners are phenomenal. But it’s just this one group that need change.”
West Belfast MLA, Danny Baker spoke about the recent escalation of anti-community behaviour and how he has been working with various statutory agencies, authorities and community groups to tackle the issue.
“There are lots of great stuff that goes on all year round and all summer. We had a great summer with all the youth work that was going on and all the community work, but there has been an element growing within the Stewartstown Road that happened around this time last year. It starts off with a wee fire here or a firework getting thrown or stones, to bigger crowds developing and last weekend we did see that escalation,” said the MLA.
Danny Baker MLA, Cllr Caoimhín McCann and the Colin Community Safety team
“It went to larger crowds probably around 40 of them, throwing fireworks at the businesses, some shops had to close early which is just unacceptable and it’s about then coming together and pulling our resources. So, I have spent all this week meeting with every community group that is involved within youth work and those within community safety.
“We had a really good summer with diversity work, we had great community events being run from Ortus in the Dairy Farm to the Colin Neighbourhood Partnership at the Town Square to the Lagmore Pride event, you had it everywhere. It was a very positive summer but coming over the last couple of weeks you could see things starting to bubble a wee tiny bit, seeing fires at Woodside, there was an incident we’ve uncovered around a woman being verbally abused and the language used towards her.
"It was an early indicator that things were starting to turn and it did definitely escalate last weekend. There was a larger crowd at an earlier time coming onto the Stewartstown Road and just behaved in an unacceptable way from fireworks going into the businesses just flying up and down on bicycles along the road – one of them could get killed that’s the other danger there as well."
Mr Baker said that youth providers in the area want to see young people make the right decisions.
"We don’t want to see anybody getting in trouble, and then also it is about holding statutory agencies to account as well, the likes of the PSNI who I am asking to be more visible. I want them to be out off their vehicle, I want them to be out talking to young people. Early intervention and prevention is the main key.
“We’re hoping to de-escalate and we’re being proactive. I’ve met with the community safety officers all week as well. They’re going to go out from early as they do all weekends, they do great work. Stephen Magennis and his team and Brendan McAteer from CNP. We’ve pulled together, you’ll never cure everything, but I do think people will see how much we’re trying to resolve it and as I say it is only a small minority and again these things can bubble up anywhere and we just want to make sure that our kids are safe and not making the wrong decisions."
