Police aim to break wall of silence in some inner-city areas of Bradford

Residents in parts of the city are “reluctant” to speak to officers about criminal activity in their neighbourhoods, a meeting was told last night.

Now Inspector Di Collins has appealed for Bradford residents to come forward with intelligence to help them tackle growing crime in the district.

She said small amounts of information helped build up a picture of information which they could use to gain entry warrants to places where crimes were taking place.

Addressing members of the Council’s Bradford East Area Committee on behalf of the Bradford East Neighbourhood Policing Team, Insp Collins said she wanted to break down barriers among some areas of the community where there was little trust at the moment.

She said: “Some of these people are reluctant to speak to us because of the way policing may be carried out in their own country.

“We want to establish groups to talk and recruit volunteers from these communities to work with the police.

“We are doing a lot of recruitment and asking them to volunteer for us and if they like doing that they could perhaps be recruited full time.”

She added that Police Community Support Officers were working with ward officers, mostly on the beat to create visual awareness and improve intelligence from residents.

She said the idea was to be on the front foot with issues, rather than reacting to them.

Issues surrounding the problems with drugs were the biggest cause of worry in the ward.

Councillor Safar Iqbal (Labour, Bradford Moor) said drug dealing issues were a concern.

"In BD3 it has got out of hand," he said.

"I get a lot of calls from residents who are worried out it. We need to try and run some sort of campaign. Drugs have got big in the last few years. Now people are buying high performance cars

with money from drugs and then they race around. They are going to end up killing people.

"If there is a campaign to create awareness then people can report these crimes."

Councillor Mohammad Shafiq (Labour, Bradford Moor) said lots of people had approached him with concerns about drug dealing.

"One of those who came to me with concerns was a 14-year-old boy. It is wrong they should be worried about this at their age," he said.

Councillor Hassan Khan (Labour, Bowling and Barkerend) said he was also concerned about vehicle crimes.

"Crimes such as driving without insurance in the BD3 area are so bad it puts insurances high. In some cases it is twice as high as in BD2 which is unfair on residents."

Bradford East Area Committee chair Councillor Rachel Sunderland (Lib Dem, Bolton and Undercliffe) said: "People have spoken to me about witnessing drug crimes and when I have told them to contact the police they say the police are not bothered and are only interested in the big fish."

Inspector Collins said the police were working on ways to get intelligence of crimes.

"We need people to talk to us. Even small amounts of information given anonymously through Crimestoppers will help.

"We are looking at ways of going into communities to speak to people because inviting people to come to us does not work.

"Crimestoppers is a way to build that bridge. If we are told of a drugs issue we need to get as much information together to be able to go to the magistrate and get a warrant so we can go in and disrupt them. We can't go to court with half baked evidence.

"Over the past weeks we have seized a lot of stuff. Taking this off the streets causes the most disruption. That's what it's all about.

"We won't cure it but we will stop the: "It's all right to do it attitude"."