Where are our police officers? Why can they not stop or even detect crimes in the very place where they are known by everyone to happen on a daily basis - year in - year out?In a guest blog a couple of days ago Soapsoane uses the term "dipstick" to describe how citizens who use call centre services are treated. The term "punter" also comes to mind. Punters are often thought of as mug- gamblers or else as users of the services of prostitutes.
Yet our police and local councils treat us like punters too. They are constantly promising, year in and year out, that they are tackling crime problems with dynamic new initiatives. They are constantly telling us that crimes are going down. However, by failing to focus upon specific types of crime levels in specific real neighbourhoods they are able to dilute and homogenise national and city level crime figures by including inner-city areas with outer-city leafy middle-class areas and concealing the reality of crime in all its diversity. And by sneakily adopting the same ploy as the Home Office they use a relatively high crime year....say 2003 - rather than 2006 or 2007 - as a reference point to be able to say all crime is going down.
If the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Constabulary lived in Mapperley Park in Nottingham - would it have its enduring problem with punters, pimps and prostitutes?
Mapperley Park is a conservation area of large 19th Victorian and Edwardian red-brick houses and apartments. The area has been plagued by street-level soliciting prostitutes for years. These women urinate and at times even defaecate in residents front gardens. They sometimes leave condoms in their gardens. And may on occasion even leave their "works" and drugs stashes in residents gardens. In broad daylight they perform sex acts for and and engage in sex with punters in cars on the streets.
One sunny Sunday afternoon my fiance and I were walking through Mapperley Park and saw a young prostitute with her back against the passenger window of a parked 4x4 - and right there on the street of this genteel Edwardian neighbourhood she was vigorously masturbating herself for the paid perversion of the entranced and shameless grey haired driver of the vehicle.
"Disgusting tramps. No shame!" Elaine shouted as we walked past the pair. "Where are the police? What do we pay them to do?"
As criminologists who know about riots, we know about the need for our police officers to police our neighbourhoods with integrity and balance - something that we call Policing by Consent. Well the Residents of Mapperley Park are not just giving the police their consent to crack-down and eradicate the prostitution menace in their neighbourhood - for decades they've been BEGGING them to do it! So what is happening in Mapperley Park is maximum tolerance policing without consent!
An innocent man walking the 1.5 miles or so from Mapperley Park into Nottingham city centre has to run-the gauntlet of pestering prostitutes asking "want business love" "have you got the time, got a cigarette" etc. Sometimes the women, who are sometimes younger than 16, threaten these innocent pedestrians with knives in attempt to extract money. I know all this because I've experienced it first hand walking into the city to meet with friends in a bar.
These desperate women are not local residents - but they brazenly invade the area on a daily basis to make the life of residents a misery.
And don't get me wrong I know that their own lives are not a bed of roses and probably never were. Many were abused as children and continue to be abused as adults. Alan a Dale knows more about street level prostitutes than most people - because he has studied them and their punters.
A large proportion of the Council Tax (Community Charge) that residents pay goes to pay for police services. SO WHY DO THE POLICE ALLOW STREET LEVEL PROSTITUTION TO EXIST, year in and year out, IN MAPPERLEY PARK?
Whenever the gentle and long-suffering residents of Mapperley Park complain about the street-level prostitution problem the police tell them that they are tackling it with new initiatives that will solve it - such as special vice units, community wardens, and punter "change programs" etc. Once, about 3 years ago, they even had two mounted police officers on their horses stand on Mapperley Parks road junction "The Point" all day. The horses were there for one day only. What kind of dipstick policing is that? What is The POINT of that - if not to punterise us all?
Not only Nottingham's Prostitutes, but Nottingham's Community Safety Partnership and Police are Punterizing Nottingham's Citizens.
Not only Nottingham's Prostitutes, but Nottingham's Community Safety Partnership and Police are Punterizing Nottingham's Citizens.
On Thursday this week I had a camera in Mapperley Park. The pictures that I took are in this blog post.
The pictures are of a group of white van men and two Prostitutes. The van is parked in the middle of the afternoon in plain view on The Point in Mapperley Park. The two women involved had been standing on the corner opposite where the van is parked and soliciting for sex with every passing car driver and pedestrian for about 20 minutes before these pictures were taken. The van had been cruising the streets and driving past the women before parking. The men and the prostitutes obviously engage in sex in the van for money in the notorious red light area.So where are the police? Why is it that I can take pictures like these - DAY IN AND DAY OUT in Mapperley Park? Why should the residents of Mapperley Park pay for policing services out of their taxes when the police do nothing to stop this brazen criminal behaviour? Even a child knows that prostitution, and the heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine criminal markets go hand in hand. How many men who use prostitutes are carrying STD's and infecting women with them? The social and health costs of street level prostitution - for residents, the women involved and punters is devastating.
Now obviously I'm not a police officer, but even I was able to detect these men having sex on the streets with prostitutes in Mapperly Park in Nottingham on a sunny afternoon on Thursday this week. Where were the police? This happens brazenly in a respectable middle-class area in Nottingham EVERY DAY! WHY?
Ello, Ello, What's Goin on 'Ere then Chief Constable?
The older grey haired man leaning on the van first drew my attention because he had been slyly peeping into the back of this van several times. Obviously, someone was doing something "private" in it and he was perving the act. At this point I took up position and took out my camera.
The older grey haired man leaning on the van first drew my attention because he had been slyly peeping into the back of this van several times. Obviously, someone was doing something "private" in it and he was perving the act. At this point I took up position and took out my camera.
In the first picture the older man in the vest is probably negotiating with the prostitute.
In this next picture on the left, the prostitute begins to enter the back of the van to join whoever is already inside it. Police Lesson Field Note 1: This is not normal behaviour
!
Next, the woman joins her prostitute workmate - and existing punter - in the back of the van.
Note that a man enters the front door of the van at the same time. Police Field Note 2: This is not normal behaviour either!
Next: Grey haired man in vest enters van behind the prostitute. Police Field Note 3: This really is not normal behaviour. Don't ignore this sort of thing. You are being paid by the residents of this area to tackle crime of this kind. No really, you are!
In the picture on the right there are now three men and two prostitutes inside the van. Police Field Note No 4. Sex could well be taking place here. It could. No, really - it could!
In this next picture on the left the prostitutes leave the scene and one gives the other her share of the money they just earned for personal services.
In this final picture the younger man pulls up his jogging trousers after being inside the van with the two prostitutes for several minutes. Clearly unafraid of being detected by our local police, the two shameless men openly share a pervy-punter criminal snigger about their encounter on the street before getting into the front of the van and driving off. As a final two fingered salute to the absent police, prostitutes and Mapperley Park residents they blast their horn.
Below is the police solution to this daily criminal occurrence. It's simply the latest in an endless line of dipstick-punterising promises made down the decades to the respectable tax payers of Mapperley Park!
If the chief Constable of Nottingham lived in Mapperley Park - would this waste of paper be enough to satisfy her?
Below is the police solution to this daily criminal occurrence. It's simply the latest in an endless line of dipstick-punterising promises made down the decades to the respectable tax payers of Mapperley Park!
If the chief Constable of Nottingham lived in Mapperley Park - would this waste of paper be enough to satisfy her?
I repeat my question: IF THE CHIEF CONSTABLE LIVED IN MAPPERLEY PARK - WOULD SHE ALLOW THIS BEHAVIOUR TO CONTINUE OUTSIDE HER OWN FRONT DOOR?
Police Notice:
OK - a lot of you police officers are spirited and good people doing a difficult job as well as you can. But its not good enough for senior police officers to set priorities that let other people suffer enduring crime problems, year in year out for decades, simply because they do not accord them enough priority.
Our Police constabularies should treat ALL neighbourhoods as though their Chief Constable lives in them.
Robin
Note: Vehicle registration plates and the features of subjects have been airbrushed out in the above pictures - since it's not my job to provide the police with offender details that they should be collecting themselves. That's what I pay my taxes for after all! And also because, unbelievable as it might seem, revealing them here - even when it is plainly in the interests of the public to so do - might lead the long arm of the law to begin routing in my direction. And I'm much too busy earning my living and paying my taxes to be dealing with that kind of unjust nonsense.
5 comments:
Oh dear, you are in BIG trouble...
You will be arrested for breaching the Data Protection Act, Illegal Espionage, Public Nuisance offences, and being a member of the public in a public place.
What gives you the right to spy on these innocent people, the white van men probably just wanted to show their ladyfriends the inside of their smart new van.
I am sure the full weight of the law will be thrown at you, and the police will persue with such enthusiasm and vigour it will leave you quaking in your cell. At least the streets will be safer after our hard working, honest police finally lock you up.
RAmen.
hibbo
I know. I'm a public menace and danger to the public and police and other people for speaking up against he fact that the law is being broken - and ignored by yhe police - and publishing the evidence to prove it.
Who is the soft target that is easy to handle and process - me (a respectable gentle citizen) or the prostitutes and white van men?
I think this is a really thorough piece of neighbourhood policing and I think you're wrong not to give the police the photos and the registration number of the vehicle for the following reasons:
1 We all agree that the case of nuisance has been effectively made. Just by your participation you have some really good quality information backed up with anger, frustration both as a passing pedestrian and a real empathy with how it must feel for the local residents
2 but you really don't know just how bad it is to be a prostitute and the sense of the blog posting only really looks at the issue from the perspective of righteous indignation at the nuisance and the
issue of 'the acts' in terms of breaking social and moral codes that most 'right thinking people' would like to see 'moved on'
This is fine but the real issue is the power abuse of the women.
Four years ago I was coming out of Mapperley Park and I hear a rustle in the bushes and heard a woman's voice, obviously in distress. As I walked I suddenly saw a man and a woman, both thin, unkempt, drug users. The man was trying to take some money from the woman and she was attempting to get away from him. As soon as he saw me he loudly said: 'but you got that money for a trick,you promised me: let's go into a shop and get some change'
as if the general public wouldn't dare to come near him, as if there's some general morality to be used against prostitutes that makes the money they 'earn' fair game for anyone to further punterise.
He was right, I didn't dare go into the 'forbidden zone' and challenge this 'morality'.
Yet really, until we do, until we have the courage the look at the underpinnings of the 'sexual' displays that are increasingly spillig over into the street for what they really are: a powerful abuse at all levels of society which include the police and the judiciary, then we won't get anywhere.
When a prostitute goes into court, mostly likely for failing a drugs test, again she is likely to be humilated and further 'punterised' by the court system and the judge who won't be able to help himself saying something that draws attention to her availability for anyone. I heard a judge say 'you've been out all night and you're probably full of substances'
-making the point for everyone in court that she was also full of what men had put into her body.
Should the police and the courts should really be allowed to continue punterising lives, now in the 21st century?
Should they be challenged to realise that they have a responsibility to cherish life and not cause further harm by a powerful word, a comment or a stereotyped approach to prostitution like 'Oh I'd give er one, or look at the state of that', all stereotypes discovered in school and never challenged as harmful by the educational system. Boys must be left to be boys after all...
The world as they define it seems to be that some women are good women and then there are bad women!
Good women are the ones who conform to man made rules and the bad ones are the ones who conform to man made stereotypes!
So Robin, if I were you I'd give the information to the police, I'd contact the Prostitute Workers group and I'd ask them to do a guest blog...
Kind regards
Soapsoane
Soapsoane - all your points = totally agreed.
Drive-by Policing:
The blog theme is righteous indignation at the fact that the police play on the "Oh it’s such a complex issue - and we're tackling it from the "johns (customers)" demand angle that annoys me. Because they don't fully tackle it - it’s a half-baked slip-shod attitude because they don't live in the area where it’s happening.
And it’s also a complex area (as you point out) of victimisation, and potential victimisation, of the rest of us. I know a man who many years ago served 6 months imprisonment for GBH. He made the mistake of intervening to help out a prostitute who was being beaten up by her pimp. The pimp pulled a knife and he and the woman together turned upon and attacked the man. This was in the 1970's - the man was from Barbados. In those days (where he lived as a Black man) he genuinely needed to carry a knife for protection. He won the fight and lost the court case. He said he would never help out a prostitute again.
In the original pictures (there is a lot more detail than in the blog ..and you can zoom in as a digital camera was used )- where the old man is leaning on the van and negotiating terms with the woman - the look on her face is one of resigned disgust, humiliation, fear and victimisation. Clearly, you can see she is there but does not want to be where she is, nor doing what she is doing.
My argument in this blog is that by giving the residents of Mapperley Park a second rate service the police give everyone - the "working girls" included a second rate service.
They crack-down from time to time and then drift back to half-measures again. That’s punterization.
The women are used and abused and the biggest victims of all without doubt - but they should not be allowed, and the punters and pimps should not be allowed, to victimise other law abiding people on the streets with their anti-social public behaviour in residential neighbourhoods. The police drive by as it happens. (Drive-by policing?)
I'd argue that Prostitute outreach work - while it helps individual women ...which is excellent... is something that the police rely upon for their own lazy half-baked - buck-passing inactivity. After all, after all these years...why else are prostitutes, punters and citizens still being abused on our streets by the existence of street-level prostitution?
And - of course - the brothels need closing down too!
Robin
Hello Robin!
very interesting article
I'm writing about prostitution in Nottingham and how it has changed in recent years for Nottingham Uni student magazine Impact and I wondered whether, since this article published in 2008, you had seen the police deal with the problem more effectively? are there still as many prostitutes on the streets? would you come to the same conclusion today?
any thoughts/comments you could send my way would be very much appreciated!!
thanks alot
Rose
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