‘You wouldn’t last a week’

Out-of-control youth, menacing dogs, Mongrel Mob, Black Power. MYLESHUME finds there is never a dullmomentfor residents living in troubled Jollie St.

It’s 10am on a Tuesday and it isn’t long before the peace is broken in Jollie St. ‘‘Put the f...... dog away, I’m sick of it, I’m scared of it. It’s tried to attack me twice. The police are just there put your dog away before I ring the pound.’’

The shouting woman holds her school-aged daughter’s hand as the mongrel dog confronts them on the footpath. It has been locked outside by its apparent owners who deny any link. A man on a bike tries to shoo the dog away, before two police officers emerge from a house across the street and call animal control.

The woman’s expletives ring out through the neighbourhood. For many living here, such encounters form part of an ordinary day.

Residents in Jollie St, on the eastern border of Linwood, chuckle at the irony in the name. Each has a story to tell. The burglaries, threats, BB gun pellet holes in windows, fear of leaving the house, teenagers leaping into their property to evade police.

Almost $6000 in surveillance cameras and security alarms protect one wary homeowner.

There have been 50 dog-related complaints to council from Jollie St in the past year, along with 12 excessive noise complaints. Housing New Zealand (HNZ) has had five complaints of threats and harassment in recent months. Misbehaving tenants have been evicted, it says.

Above all, it is youth crime that has earned Jollie St a reputation as one of the most troubled streets in Christchurch.

The problem has caught the attention of the same police team that stemmed crime in Phillipstown. It has been tasked with improving the neighbourhood.

A house down Jollie St could set you back between $240,000 to $280,000, according to council valuations.

A mix of state housing and homeowners, the street’s 74 homes are not all bad. Groomed properties with neat hedges and daffodil gardens are nestled among homes with overgrown lawns. A supermarket worker gathers trollies discarded on grass berms. Mongrel Mob and Black Power. Tenants and hard-working homeowners. Residents insist only a handful of households are sources of conflict, crime and chaos. It is the recent headlinegrabbing incidents that crop up in conversation. Stories like the youth from the street who took a front-end loader on a joyride and was chased by police for 90-minutes. He allegedly caused thousands of dollars of damage, including in Jollie St, before armed police shot a tear gas canister through the cab window to stop him. Or that of Tamatea Lorenzo Briggs, who allegedly stole a car and robbed the Woolston Super Liquor with two co-offenders, aged 15 and 16. Several bottles of alcohol were smashed over the store worker’s head in the alleged incident.

Jollie St was never this bad, residents say, until people displaced from the quakes moved into the street three years ago.

‘‘My anxiety is up here, I’m stressed . . . I’ve had a gutsful, it’s the intimidation, things getting stolen, I woke up the Sunday before to the armed offenders [squad] on my fence fully armed,’’ a resident said. The woman closed the curtains, fearful of retribution if anyone discovered she was speaking out.

She has lived in the house for 10 years but has asked HNZ to move.

Her wishes were supported by a doctor’s letter: ‘‘[She] feels intimidated and harassed by her neighbour at [address withheld] and this is affecting her health. Her anxiety is getting worse and she feels unsafe in her home.’’

Nearby, a mother who would only go by the name Tina, stands outside an unkempt state house with friend Jackie Galvin and her 2-year-old son.

Galvin used to live in Jollie St, but the crime and disorder became too much.

‘‘You don’t want to sit here and try to raise your children amongst this, it’s not good, straight up. You live down here for a week and you wouldn’t even last a week. You leave your bike out and it’s gone, even a kid’s bike, it’s gone, and even their shoes,’’ Galvin said.

The Press met with a group of residents who form the core of a new neighbourhood support group in Jollie St.

They count six houses as the main cause of trouble. They blame bad parenting and poor HNZ tenancy selection.

Some members own their own homes, take pride in their property and love their neighbours. They worry bad residents will drag down the re-sale value of their homes.

‘‘I’m 12 minutes to work, I’m five minutes to the beach, why do I need to move due to these people who they [HNZ] have brought into the street?’’ a homeowner asked.

Walton Briggs is worried about what the future holds for his 17-year-old son, Tamatea, who has relatives in Black Power.

Standing at the front gate of his red brick, graffitied state house, Walton Briggs blamed Linwood’s problems on youth having nothing to do.

He is waiting on paperwork to visit his son, who is in prison on remand.

‘‘He’s a bloody good-hearted soul, he just does some stupid bloody things,’’ he said.

‘‘As he’s gotten older, we’ve got no control, I mean what are you going to do, you’re not allowed to bash them anymore. I think as some of these police officers say, sometimes these kids need a good boot up the bloody arse, but if you do that, you end up in court for doing it.

‘‘I am worried about his future, but I can’t do anything about it, it’s up to him now, he’s got to either pull his tit in or handle the jandal.

‘‘Some of these arseholes need to look in their own backyards before they start talking about other people, I mean there are a lot of these kids around here that are in jail.’’

Several agencies, including police, Housing New Zealand and Child Youth and Family have worked together to deal with Jollie St’s troubles.

The neighbourhood support group and police believe it is time to stop the street’s snowballing problems.

‘‘These kids have got no parental control. You just know teens because they were intimidated by them.

Otherwise well-behaved teenagers joined the group for fear of being targeted.

Webley said police would start by establishing a neighbourhood support panel and try to break down inter-generational distrust in police in some households.

‘‘A staff member and I went to deal with a burglary, caught the offender, who was a 15-year-old boy from Jollie St, and he was still holding his window washing brush,’’ Webley said.

‘‘The conversation went along the lines of: ‘Go to school?’ ‘No’. ‘What course are you doing?’ ‘I don’t do any courses’. ‘Employed?’ ‘No’. ‘What’s your income?’ ‘No’. He was one I started jacking up to get into a trade . . . we started that process but he didn’t engage. That’s something we need to keep working on. We need to get them engaged in something – and something meaningful.’’

You don’t want to sit here and try to raise your children amongst this, it’s not good, straight up.’’