A police report claiming that Leominster is a safe place with “not a single no-go area” has been dismissed as completely inaccurate by a group of local business proprietors with premises near Corn Square.
The shopkeepers are upset because their windows are repeatedly being broken and drunken yobs continue to use their doorways as urinals yet nothing is done to quell the current round of anti-social behaviour in the town centre.
While on the one side the police report states that Leominster is “safer than ever” with a lower incidence of reported crime; the business folk say they are frightened to say too much for fear of reprisals.
Town councillors have voiced their sympathies with the shopkeepers and, following discussions at last Tuesday’s meeting of the general purposes committee, members instructed the clerk to write to a group of business people based in and around School Lane urging them to report every misdemeanour.
“The problem is that having suffered repeated attacks on their shops and windows, with the stinking mess always having to be cleaned up by the shopkeepers themselves, they are understandably nervous of putting their heads above the parapet to complain in case they get targeted again,” said Councillor Roger Hunt. “We all agreed that, while we do have every sympathy with the businesses, they MUST report it to the police and this is the only way we will effect a change.”
In a “round robin” style letter to the police signed by seven business proprietors, the victims of recent vandalism freely admit that most incidents have gone unreported.
“Unfortunately most incidents are not reported to the police as most victims feel that it will not make a difference and most feel that the levels of policing are inadequate, especially at night,” it states.
“We have been told that only two units cover the whole of the area during the weekend when most of the offences take place.”
In the police report into safety and patrolling undertaken in Leominster, Inspector Peter Wilson refutes claims about the town’s “no-go areas.”
“Our figures indicated there wasn’t a problem to talk of in the town.
“If the complaints were to be believed, it indicated that there was a high level of under-reporting.
“So we decided to find out which was correct,” said Inspector Wilson.
Three areas of town – the Grange, Bridge Street Sports Centre and the Infants/Junior School – have been monitored since October over a two-month period, the report reveals.
“Bearing in mind that we were also patrolling in those areas on a far greater basis, we can now say with confidence that these areas are not what they have been painted out to be,” says Inspector Wilson.