West Dunbartonshire Council increases anti-social behaviour patrols

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Anti-social behaviour officers are patrolling estates day and night to tackle incidents blighting communities, says the area’s housing chief.A restructure has seen an increase in the number of hours the patrols take place – with the team based in neighbourhoods from 8.30am until 2am seven days a week.Previously, the service only operated during weekdays between standard working hours.Peter Barry, chief housing officer, says the extra overnight hours are “critically important” as that is when much of the anti-social behaviour takes place.But he said there is still much more to be done, particularly in communities where people are afraid to speak up through fear of reprisals.The senior officer said he was “sickened” by a recent incident where neighbours were too scared to speak about what had happened.Addressing councillors at a recent full council meeting, Mr Barry said: “We’ve extended the hours from a nine to five service to a service that runs until 2am and that’s critically important because that’s when a lot of the anti-social behaviour that concerns our constituents is being experienced.“Now we’re in a situation where our operatives can effectively act as witnesses, including acting as witnesses in court, rather than relying on communities to provide their own witnesses.“One example of that was a recent fire that broke out at one of our properties where it was our neighbourhood officers at night who noticed it and took all the immediate actions to get the emergency services in place and supported tenants so it’s definitely having an impact.”He said he would like to take the service further to a point where communities felt more confident to call out unacceptable behaviour.The officer explained: “We’ve taken an