Small Minority: ‘Large Majority Ruining It For Everyone Else’

YOUNG residents of Glenville Park housing estate, Ardkeen, where vandalism and anti-social behaviour is the lowest in the city,  told today how adult gangs continue to overrun the area.

One youth said members of the local Neighbourhood Watch group, an organized group of citizens devoted to crime and vandalism prevention, carried digital cameras and mobile phones to threaten young rivals or those who tried to vandalise or cause general disruption in the area.

“We could be just sitting on the wall at the end of the road and they’d just come up and tell us to go home or they’d call our parents” said 15-year-old Mark Walker.

“We’d be just chatting and having the laugh like!”

Another described how some teenagers were afraid to leave their homes late at night, and warned that “things are as bad as ever” despite intensive efforts to degenerate the area by “the lads from Farran Park”.

“Me mates from the ‘Farran’ would sometimes come over on the week-ends and we’d play a bit of football on the green. The lads were mad cunts now.

“They even wrote ‘Posh Scum’ on the electricity box thing outside one of the auld lads houses.”

“Needless to say, a meeting was called by ‘the elders’, and the boys were hunted out of the estate the next week by yer man with the boat in his front yard.Prick!”

Local youths on the Dunmore road side of the estate said adults as old as eighty were still being recruited by the Neighborhood watch.

Only last week up to a three elderly males, clad in lacoste golf jumpers, with the arms tied over their shoulders, gathered around a group of youths swearing and making threatening hand gestures.

“They were giving it loads boy! They said we scuffed the wall outside their houses with our shoes. We were only sitting there for ten minutes talking. I didn’t even realise I was kicking the stupid wall.” said Michael Flynn, a 1st year college student in DIT.

“One of the men said if he caught us sitting on his wall again he’d break all our legs with his five iron.”

But one teenager who lives minutes from where the scuffed wall incident took place said her friends were still living in fear. The girl, who was too afraid to give her name, said: “They think they can just tell us what to do all the time. Its not fair. They drive around in their big cars and talk shit as loud as they want. They have no fear.”

“This large majority of adults are ruining it for everyone else. They are terrorising the area and things are not going to get better any time soon. They have personal garda phone numbers in their mobiles and are not afraid to ring them— they will and everybody knows it. They are using the elderly 80-90 years old as watchdogs. Its not fair.”

Experts warned the problem of neighbourhood watch gangs in Ireland was getting worse. Jeremy Kuntlip, a 23-year-old Xtravision employee said: “They’re everywhere. Watching. Waiting. Hoping you’ll make a mistake. These people are fucking Nazis man!”