Budget cuts have taken around 500 officers from the streets of Hartlepool since 2010 - leaving residents no option but to patrol their own streets
IN the early-hours chill, a small posse of neighbours pick out the beady eyes of intruders by torchlight.
The citizens’ patrol, tired of police inaction on their streets, have chanced upon two possibly dangerous suspected villains.
Insisting they are not vigilantes, taxi driver Stephen Picton tells me about the Thursday night encounter: “One was perched on the awning above the front door of a house.
“I thought he was going to break in. The other was keeping watch. I was worried they may have weapons.”
Renowned locally for his charity work, Stephen — one of three volunteers on the 1.30am patrol — says he shone his light in the perched intruder’s face as a pal rang the cops.
In the darkness, Stephen told the suspects: “You’ve got ten seconds to get your a**es out of here. I know what you look like now. Do one.”
For here in Hartlepool, folk have begun taking the law into their own hands. This week the gritty North Sea port was described as “the town where police have given up”.
With a population of 92,000, Hartlepool has just ten officers on duty overnight. And a BBC investigation found that on one recent Saturday, all ten were tied up with incidents, leaving none to respond to 999 calls.
The local force, Cleveland Police, has had nearly £40million cut from its budget since 2010 and has shed 500 officers. This week it announced the mothballing of Hartlepool’s custody suite, meaning that from next year, arrested suspects will have to be driven 14 miles to Middlesbrough to be questioned.
Many locals I spoke to in Hartlepool this week say police have simply stopped responding to some calls.
It is little wonder, many argue, that crime rates in the County Durham town — especially involving violence — have soared.
Some here have even taken to Facebook to try to solve crimes when threadbare policing let them down.
One member, Darren Price, 45, says: “We feel we’ve no option but to try to look after ourselves.
“People are scared, especially at night. It is vans and houses getting broken into, anti-social behaviour.
“We don’t blame the police. It is like the NHS, we know it is under-staffed and morale is low. We are just trying to give a helping hand.
“We don’t encourage anybody on the patrols to engage with anybody who commits a crime, all we ask is to report it to the police.”
Another member, self-employed gas engineer Paul Timlin was unable to work when cops failed to turn up for two weeks after he had £1,500-worth of tools stolen earlier this year.
Outside his neat semi in the Hart Station area, he shows me how the thieves — “most likely druggies,” he says — were captured by his CCTV cameras ransacking his work van.
Paul, 57, tells me: “I went down to the police station and told them I had CCTV but got no real response other than a crime number.
“People behind the desk said it was a low-grade crime as far as they were concerned. But to me it was a valuable set of tools and the theft stopped me working.
“I had to replace them quickly or I’d lose money daily, so I put my CCTV video on Facebook that day. People identified one of the guys.”
Paul says he “knows a few people who know a few people”. A phone call was made to the villain saying: “Those tools need to be returned.”
He adds: “Within the next day or two we got the tools back.”
Around two weeks later police finally arrived to take a statement from Paul. He handed over the CCTV and the name of the criminal.
He says: “The police said they had a major incident in Stockton on the day of my theft and just didn’t have the numbers. A few weeks later I got a message saying the case was closed. No further action would be taken.”
He says he felt uneasy taking the law into his own hands, but adds: “Unfortunately, the police haven’t got the bodies to deal with this sort of crime, that’s why it’s on the rise.
“Criminals realise the police’s response time is low. Part
of my council tax is allocated to the police, but that wasn’t cut when Cleveland Police reduced their numbers by 500.”
In Hartlepool’s Foggy Furze district, locals have welcomed the patrols by Stephen and eight other volunteers.
Retired forklift truck driver David Dodds, 69, says: “I hope it’s a deterrent. The police should be doing it but I feel for the officers. It’s not their fault there’s not enough money.”
THE number of crimes reported in Hartlepool during the last year has increased by 19 per cent.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 10,757 crimes were recorded from the year to March.
This means a rate of 116 crimes per 1,000 residents during 2017 to 2018 - above the England and Wales average of 82.
Gun and knife possession offences rose from 2o to 73 incidents, while theft shot up by 19 per cent.
The latest police figures also reveal the number of robberies between April 2017 and March 2018 more than doubled.
There were 99 robberies - including violent muggings - in the period, which is an increase of 115.2 per cent in 2016-2017 when 46 were reported.
Hartlepool also has the highest level of crime across the force area.
At the nearby Ye Olde Durhams Social Club, supervisor Jacqui Hunter serves afternoon pints to mainly retirees from Hartlepool’s heavy industries. Drinkers here overwhelmingly welcome the community patrols.
Mum-of-two Jacqui, 31, says: “We had cars broken into at 5am. We caught it on CCTV and called police. That was in March. We’re still waiting for police to pick up the CCTV footage. They give you a crime number, then you wait for weeks and nothing happens.”
Retired toolmaker Dick Massey, 75, says: “I had the lead pinched from the canopy above my door three weeks ago. I went to the police station the next day.
“I expected them to come and have a look but they didn’t. They just gave me a crime number. I’m not happy about it. I pay my taxes.
“I asked them why you never see any police about now and they said, ‘We haven’t got the numbers’.
“I’m not surprised people are organising their own patrols.”
Co-ordinated via Facebook, the Foggy Furze Neighbourhood Patrol insist the “vigilante” tag they have been labelled with is wrong.
Taxi driver Stephen, 47, says of his early-hours encounter this week: “If we were vigilantes we would have had them on the floor, face down, with our knees in their backs. We’re a deterrent. We called police and, to be fair, they arrived in five minutes. We gave them a description of the men but they’d gone.”
Recorded crime in Hartlepool is up 19 per cent in a year. There were 99 robberies between April 2017 and March 2018, up more than 115 per cent on the previous year.
Gun and knife possession offences rose from 20 to 73, while theft is up by 19 per cent.
Hartlepool’s Labour MP Mike Hill has called an urgent meeting with police chiefs and described the recent instance of too few cops to answer Saturday night emergency calls as “unacceptable”.
He tells The Sun: “I don’t condone vigilantism in any form and don’t see that as an issue in Hartlepool. But, clearly, we’re a step closer towards that unless we get funding to see more bobbies on Hartlepool’s streets.”
Cleveland’s Chief Constable Mike Veale admits: “The service we are providing the public is nowhere near where it needs to be.”
In a statement he says: “I would not be exhibiting the courage that my officers and staff deserve if I continue to say we have enough resources, if I continue with this commentary that things in policing are OK. They are not OK.
“The cuts created and caused by austerity are too deep and have gone on for too long. My message is clear — give us the tools and we will do the job.” Since 2010 police funding nationally has fallen 19 per cent and officer numbers by 20,000.
Writing in The Sun this week, former Hartlepool Detective Superintendent Ray Mallon — nicknamed Robocop for his zero-tolerance approach that cut crime by 35 per cent — said that “simply giving police more money does not make them more effective”.
He added that officers should be taken from specialist units such as CID and put back on the beat.
Yet Chief Constable Veale’s broadside will resonate in Whitehall, where Home Secretary Sajid Javid last week promised a “fresh look” at police funding.
But until the thin blue line becomes thicker in Foggy Furze, Stephen and his friends will be out protecting their neighbourhood.
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