Prayer Patrol: ‘We’d always be there to help people’
IN 2002, the Rev Dr Dawnecia Palmer was on a plane coming back from France when she saw a headline in a newspaper saying Bristol was the worst city in Europe for drugs and gun crime.
Crime at that time was at an alltime high in St Pauls, she said.
“It was a supermarket for drugs,” she said. “At the time, it was horrible. I thought ‘I am part of a city that has crime and what are our churches doing?’
“I made it my job to go down there and it felt ‘this isn’t real.’ There was a guy at every corner selling drugs openly.
“There was also knife crime, shootouts and street sex work. We went down at night just to see what was going on.”
She said they decided to stand with the people involved and offer love and that, once those conversations started, she realised there was a reason they were there.
A common one was not having the immigration documents to be able to work in the UK, so they felt the only way they could make money was to sell drugs. Other people had been victims of abuse or neglect.
“They were telling us ‘why didn’t you come here before?,’” she said. “We didn’t want them to go away; we wanted to see some change.
“We would start just by being friendly and meeting them where they are, but seeing that is not who they are – underneath is a person who is a victim of their circumstances. They started to feel they could be vulnerable with us.
“They were telling us their personal stories.”
Towards the end of 2002, a conflict was brewing between two gangs and they heard there was going to be a shootout. The mumof-four said what they did was get people to go out on the streets – including grandparents – because they wouldn’t harm them.
“The police laughed at us and thought it was ridiculous, but there wasn’t a shootout. It never took place and that is how the Prayer Patrol came about.
“They put an officer in to monitor what we were doing and he said that crime was reduced by 60 per cent in three months by the end of the year.”
With the scheme such a success, the Prayer Patrol then started to go all over the country and abroad.
The 64-year-old said: “We had the dawn patrol, where you would see the people bringing it in, who had white skin and good cars. They would come in before 6am.
“In the morning, people were going to work, and that’s when they would be targeted to sell drugs. One of the most dangerous times was lunchtime, when they would start targeting children with bikes [to sell drugs for them]. That was awful and it really touched my heart.
“We would always be there. When the police were out, we would not be out there, so that’s what we did – we wore them down.”
She said that drug-dealing was also about status, so they were trying to make people see they had leadership and business skills that could be used elsewhere.
“We would say ‘you do not have to use them in crime.’ It was about helping them see that way,” she continued.
“Maybe it made them feel there was an importance to their lives
without the need to take or sell drugs, that their life is valuable.
“Shaming people isn’t going to help them. I say to them ‘I know you are valuable.’”
She remembers an incident where they saw a man running down Ashley Road with a machete. She said that the other woman she was out with from the Prayer Patrol just grabbed him from behind and, holding on to him, started to weep. The Rev Palmer then quickly held his hand to take the machete.
“He said ‘look what you have done, you messed up good,’ she continued. “We just kept praying and talking with him, telling him he didn’t need to kill that man.
“He had just come out of prison and he was ready to go back in. We stopped him, so, for me, that was a good day.”
After St Pauls, there was a shift towards the Easton area around 2010, she explained, and a gang called ‘BS5’ was formed.
There were now lots of groups involved from different backgrounds, she said, adding that in Easton the problem was knife crime rather than guns.
She said that, as a result of their work, Bristol’s image started to change.
She described their work as “numberless”, adding for them it was about the impact they had on communities.
“Everywhere we can put a word, we are effective,” she continued. “The fact that the people who were on the street are no longer there, the fact that it stopped the drugs coming in from Jamaica and the other islands shows we got to the root of it.
“I feel like things have advanced a lot. There is a lot more listening going on now. It is a different mindset and I am very happy to see the changes. I feel hopeful for the future. I do not know why I am called to do it. For me, it is about being somebody that could create a change and make a difference.”
She said they still covered Easton today because there was still “a bit of tension going on there”.
The Rev Palmer said one of her big concerns these days was around missing young people and county lines drugs networks.
The police put an officer in to monitor what we were doing and he said that crime was reduced by 60 per cent in three months Rev Dawnecia Palmer