Home secretary David Blunkett wants closer cooperation between police and the housing sector on antisocial behaviour. In part two of Housing Today's look at the subject, Saba Salman visits Hackney, where council officers and police are reclaiming estates from crack dealers.
To the passer-by, the moth-eaten mattress on the floor of the bin shed is just a piece of unwanted furniture left out for collection. But to two Hackney estate safety officers, who spot not only the mattress but also the cling film wraps and condom packets around it, it is evidence that prostitutes are using the space for business and drug dealers are using it to sell crack.

Estate safety officer Keith Veness says: "Anywhere there's a shelter, they use it for drugs." He should know. In the past two-and-a-half years, his five-strong team has shut down 241 crack dens – working in partnership with the local police in just the kind of arrangement that the government hopes will break the back of antisocial behaviour across the UK.

It takes the team just a couple of hours to secure the shed with wire mesh. For Veness, it's a far cry from his old job working for Hackney council's housing benefit fraud team. He and his team have developed skills in detection, surveillance and undercover work. This collaboration with police epitomises the partnership approach the government wants to see and the new roles it hopes council officers will take on. Indeed, last month the team won a police award, the Borough Commander's Commendation for partnership work.

Its work is part of the council's Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy. This has a £210,000 budget, funded by the housing revenue account, and covers 26,000 council properties in the second most deprived authority in England. From next month, thanks to a £100,000 grant from the Home Office's Operation Crackdown initiative, the team will be helped by a strategy unit consisting of a police inspector, a senior member of social services and a senior housing officer. The strategy unit will set targets for raids on crack houses while estate safety officers do the work on the ground.

Cooperation with residents
In the war against antisocial behaviour, good intelligence is key. Residents act as eyes and ears, reporting crack dens whenever they spring up, and the team encourages cooperation, running a 24-hour anonymous hotline and publicising its work through regular leaflet drops.

Once they get a tip-off, officers check the property on their database to prepare themselves for any risk, looking for previous reports of benefit fraud or noise nuisance, for example. Then it's time to drop by, always in pairs for safety's sake. Veness says: "If there are more than two of us at the door, it's too confrontational. Any less, it's not safe. But with two, one of us can also act as a witness in court."

"Our standard line is, 'we're doing door-to-door checks and just need to confirm your address – are you the tenant? If you're not, when will the tenant be around?'," says estate safety officer Christine Thompson. "Then you call on the next address so they have the impression you are doing an ad hoc door knock." You can tell from outside if a flat is a crack den, she adds. The door will be damaged, with metal bars across it.

"It's like going undercover," says Veness. Several months ago, for instance, the council received complaints about a flat being used to sell crack and to broadcast pirate radio.

"I went in as a plumber on the pretence of checking out a reported leak," says Veness. "But I was mentally taking note of who was there." The team has a bag of DIY tools and a spare set of contractors' uniforms – green sweatshirts emblazoned with the council logo – that they use for the subterfuge.

The next move is to gather evidence. Here, the estate safety team has a major advantage over the police. Under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the council can install secret cameras in its properties as long as it gets authorisation from a senior housing manager, justifies the move and pays attention to human rights legislation. The police, on the other hand, would need a warrant upfront for such a move.

"The team's work helps us," says Sergeant Martyn Fitzgibbon of Stoke Newington police, one of the officers the team usually accompanies on raids. "Surveillance is time-consuming. The quicker you can get evidence to get a warrant from the magistrate to raid and close crack dens, the better."

Police and housing officers share information at monthly meetings and also informally as they carry out routine daily patrols. Veness says: "For instance, there was one dealer police wanted to raid, but our records showed his 88-year-old mother lived there and suffered from a heart condition. Police put him under surveillance instead. Eventually, he got four months in jail."

Sometimes, small-time dealers are scared off by a visit from the estate safety team. But if strong-arm tactics are called for, the police need the magistrates' warrant to act.

The raids generally take place early in the morning, and sometimes involve police and housing officers forcing entry to a property. They are meticulously planned, with housing officers acting as witnesses and providing intelligence for the mechanics of the raid.

"Before a raid," says Fitzgibbon, "we get the layout of the premises from the council so we know what we're getting into. We do a risk assessment so we can go in at an appropriate level. It could be one sergeant and six officers, or more."

There is always someone from the estate safety team on a raid, wearing a stab-proof jacket. "If the property is occupied, they can provide expert evidence for a civil injunction to get them out," says Fitzgibbon. "If it's not, they can arrange a screening-up team to secure it when we leave."

It's a dangerous process but it's all worthwhile, says the team, for the relief on tenants' faces. They recall an elderly Turkish man sitting on some steps outside an estate after a recent early morning raid, crying with relief that he could get a decent night's sleep at last. "The kick you get from this is that you've saved someone from misery," says Veness. "You wouldn't be human if you didn't take a certain amount of pride in that."

Out on patrol near a 50-flat block just off Lower Clapton Road, Veness points out a former crack den the team helped shut down in the summer after complaints from neighbours reached double figures. When the property was finally raided and the dealer arrested, the police also discovered a stash of stolen goods, from credit cards to handbags and mobile phones.

The flat was cleaned up and has since been re-let; the council gets reclaimed properties back into circulation, with new locks, within 39 days. A new door with reinforced locks has been fitted at a cost of £700, to boost security, and on the stairwell where addicts once queued for their fixes, the council has put locks on a large storage cupboard (dealers and addicts will use any sheltered space).

Trust is everything
The team started life seven years ago as part of Hackney council's 20-strong housing fraud squad. Its original aim was to tackle squatting, illegal subletting and right to buy fraud. But as the team evolved, crack dens and the antisocial behaviour they fuel – addicts loitering on stairwells, doors slamming late into the night, prostitutes working to earn money for crack – became a bigger and bigger part of its work.

As these crime-fighting duties grew, it became clear that tackling the crack problem required closer cooperation with the police. In light of its new role, a five-strong team was broken away and renamed "estate safety" four years ago.

Both sectors have worked hard to build up trust: achieving this has been crucial to the partnership's success. Fitzgibbon says: "If you're executing a warrant, you don't mouth off about it, so there has to be that level of trust. This came from working with each other. It could take one incident to dent that, but as time goes by you build up a rapport."

Clive Taper, head of service development at the council, adds: "We restrict information on a 'need to know' basis. The amount of people who know about raids and so on is kept to an absolute minimum."

The suggestion that the system forces housing officers to do traditional police work cuts no ice with Taper. "We're the landlord," he says. "You cannot have people using your premises for drugs or violence."

Hackney's system is exactly what the government wants: police and housing officers working cheek-by-jowl to tackle antisocial behaviour of the worst kind. And it's a relationship that grew not because of government diktat but, organically, through circumstance.

"We've built from the ground up," says Veness. "In a lot of boroughs there are people sitting in town halls exchanging figures about hot spots. While that's all good stuff, we started talking to people from the bottom up." Fitzgibbon adds: "At the end of the day you've got to do it, and not just talk about it."

Source

Housing Today