I’ve recently moved to an inner city part of London and it’s mostly been great. However, I suspect a neighbour of mine is dealing crack and heroin from his flat.
Now, I wouldn’t normally take issue with people doing drugs in the privacy of their home or away from others, but this is starting to irritate me.
There’s a constant stream of some pretty rough characters in and out of the place. Sometimes they’ll just loiter outside the builder waiting, but other times they’ll literally scream up to the flat for this guy’s name – at all hours of the day and night too. While they wait, there’s often drama and I’ve even witnessed a group of them jump/rob another customer once.
The entrance into the building to his flat is thankfully different to the entrance I take. However, I’ve still stumbled across people smoking crack in my stairwell from time to time. I also had my bike stolen within weeks of moving in and have stopped a bike being stolen from the same location on two occasions. I have no problem confronting the users in the stairwell or would-be thieves which has lead to threats and confrontation.
There are times when I suspect he gets a big haul because there will literally be a visible congregation of users streaming towards our building. It’s not unusual to find a group of 10-15 users hanging outside the entrance for him, all in plain sight in the middle of the day. The dealer himself is a user as I’ve seen him pretty strung-out on a few times.
I’ve reported this to the police multiple times and I know other neighbours have too. There’s even a Twitter page that someone has put up documenting the constant stream of users around the area. Yet the police seemingly don’t want to listen.
What can I do about this? I really don’t want to move from the area because it ticks every box for me except for this.
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By the Ballsacck of Mephisto! That’s a “congregation” you need to exorcise them demons by getting in touch with Police, in a friendly manner and break that demons nest!
Ahh crap, I’ll be honest, this might be a nightmare for a while.
We have recently had a couple of crack dealers move in nearby. They’re very clever about how they sell, never do it from the property, always use children to push and deal their gear.
It has resulted in pretty bad public using. I’ve had my addiction issues before, I sympathise, but we’d had people regularly using literally on our doorstep. They’re slow to move, so sometimes come home and have to deal with people farting around with their crack pipe, and even one abusive user getting arsey with people wanting to literally just get through their own front door.
It has got better this week but only as a result of:
1. A couple of local residents creating leaflets to post through every door advertising a petition.
2. Gathering signatures for the petition, and emailing them to the local Met Police station (multiple addressees), local councillors, head of the council, the Safer Neighbourhood Team, etc.
3. Turning up to councillors’ surgeries to reiterate these concerns.
4. Pressing the police to apply to the courts for a closure notice – which allows the police to arrest any non-residents causing anti-social behaviour, public drinking, carrying any drug using equipment, etc. I’m generally less comfortable with this, but I also don’t see much alternative.
5. Pushing for police patrols.
6. Asking for CCTV so we can gather evidence.
It has taken months, and we are just now seeing the results with the police able to arrest people under the closure notice.
In that time, we’ve had fights, intimidation, open dealing, and even violent hostage taking and violent use of knives and fireworks. Lived in the same property for 4 years and was absolutely fine for 3.5 years, then as soon as we had a travelling fair, some people moved in and started using, and it’s spiralled very very quickly. Not sure if the fair was related, could have just been coincidental timing.
I’m moving out in a couple of weeks so can’t say for sure whether the closure notice etc will fix everything – it lasts for 3 months, so the problem may disappear in that time, or may return. Who knows.
If you want to see what sort of letters we sent, what our petition said, etc, let me know and I’ll try and gather them up. It’s helped us get the closure notice from Westminster Magistrates, and that seems to be helping the police deal with it.
Contact the councils anti social behaviour u it for advice/action . When I worked in Southwark they were pretty good.
If they are renting then there will be tenancy issues re behaviour.
Good luck
Take it up with the local police commissioner, MP or local Councillor. Get the local newspaper involved.
Sell the same drugs more cheaply.
Undercut them
Anonymous tip off to the police
I am so sorry you have to deal with this. It sounds like an episode from Top Boy. The problem is I can’t see how you can stop it. But you have to keep fighting, the person earlier gave excellent advice. All I have for you is a message of support and admiration.
I would say call the police but they’re useless and don’t care so that won’t work. If it were me, I’d just move.
Since they don’t care about the drug dealing, could you make an anonymous call about something they might turn up for (heard a lot of shouting then multiple loud bangs, might be gunshots…oopsie must have been upstairs hoovering) then the police would hopefully turn up and they’ll get rumbled for the drugs? Aware actually making stuff up is illegal but…eh I’m stumped.
I had a similar issue when I was a student living in a crappy housing estate in East London. Tried the police and they couldn’t care less.
So I printed leaflets A4 leaflets ‘crack, cocaine, heroin, and MDMA available’ with the address of the neighbour selling drugs. Literally just left them at local bus stops, put them up outside a primary school, secondary school, left them in tube trains, buses. Anyway 48 hours later the police had a warrant to search the property and were ramming the door down at 6am.
Submit a tip on crime stoppers.
Make a log of everytime someone visits, time, date, even take a picture of there face. Ring 101 and local council with this information anonymously.
Now other things you can do is put pictures up of visitors on lampposts but be careful doing this.
From my experience there are a few options, 1. Try to make friends, doesn’t work 2. Makes enemies and react, bad idea and you’ll end up in more trouble 3. Call authorities and watch them do nothing, 4. Move out.