Pimps and drug users made site a no- go zone – until locals stepped in
RESIDENTS in some areas say council cutbacks have turned their parks into prime spots for drug addicts and prostitution.
Locals saw this happening to the historic Ward End Park in Birmingham, where a lack of lighting around the main entrance seemed to attract the 20 prostitutes working on the nearby main road.
When schools stopped taking their pupils to the 54-acre site, people living nearby took matters into their own hands.
‘It was appalling,’ says Wajid Hussain, 50. ‘This park is a real beauty and the best resource in our community and we saw it being totally abandoned.’ Wajid, along with three others from a local community forum, spoke to police officers and went undercover for six weeks to work out the extent of the problem.
They discovered that from Thursday to Sunday, there could be 150 men cruising the streets in cars or on foot looking for prostitutes.
Between 20 and 30 male drug users would use the park benches. The place was littered with syringes and used condoms each morning.
At a public meeting, the volunteers decided to begin their own evening patrol four times a week. And it worked. ‘It was so scary that first night,’ recalls local dad and volunteer patroller Ishraq Hussain, 29.
‘The drug users were like zombies coming at you out of the dark. We went in threes and used bicycles to cover a wider area.’
Pimps threatened to stab them and throw acid.
Ishraq says: ‘Much of this was of the council’s own making – for example, they closed the only toilet and sold it off to a money transfer business.’
The volunteers have so far given 12,000 hours of time and the number of syringes, condoms and kerb-crawlers has been reduced drastically.