How I got that ASBO

The case: On 25 March five members of the same family were served with antisocial behaviour orders that banned them from living anywhere within the Wirral district in Merseyside. It had taken Wirral council three years to secure the orders. Caroline Laing, manager of the council’s antisocial behaviour team, tells the story.

The behaviour of the Bridge family and the distress they have caused to their community is the worst case of neighbourhood nuisance I have seen during my seven years with the council.

Since they moved to the New Brighton area in 2000, John Bridge (40), Karen Bridge (37), John Bridge junior (20), Alan Bridge (18) and Luke Bridge (16) are alleged to have engaged in violence, threatening and aggressive behaviour, verbal abuse, intimidation, arson, dangerous driving and organised crime. I hope the New Brighton community now feel they can finally live without fearing for their safety.

The Bridges first came to my team’s attention in March 2002 when Merseyside Police asked us to help them deal with the family. Due to the very serious nature of the allegations and large number of people affected by the family’s behaviour, it was agreed that we would investigate, even though the team was not funded to deal with cases in the private rented sector at that time.

The case was allocated to an enforcement officer who began an investigation and both the officer and I attended a number of meetings with local residents to assess the nature of the allegations. All the residents said they were afraid of talking to the authorities in case the Bridge family found out. But by early 2003 a small number of residents agreed to keep incident diaries on the condition that their names were not put on the document.

Meanwhile my team investigated the history of the Bridge family and it was uncovered that the mother, Karen, had been made subject to an injunction and the whole family had been evicted from Kirby by Knowsley council. We also discovered that while he was a council tenant in Kirby the father had been arrested for the attempted murder of a neighbour but had subsequently been acquitted.

All the residents said they were afraid of talking to the authorities

Throughout 2003 the behaviour of the Bridge family continued to deteriorate to the extent that Merseyside Police set up a team of officers to monitor the Bridges and their suspected involvement in organised vehicle crime. During this period, residents often recorded in their diaries that they had seen the family verbally abusing and threatening police officers. Their own fear of the Bridges grew.

By September 2004 I decided that the council had to take action against the family, despite the evidential difficulties we had because residents’ incident diaries were anonymous. Moreover, none of the residents felt they could attend court as witnesses against the Bridge family. But we thought that if we coupled our hearsay evidence with the police evidence we would have a fighting chance against the family.

My team made applications for interim ASBOs against the five members of the family in October 2004. The applications were issued without notice as it was feared that residents would otherwise be subjected to violence and intimidation from the Bridges. So the first the family knew of the orders was when they had them served by me in the company of the police. I also obtained additional funding from the Home Office to erect CCTV directed at the Bridge family property and pay for intensive police patrols to provide protection to residents.

We then spent a number of months continuing to gather and prepare the evidence to allow us to apply for an ASBO that would force the family out of the area. We collated our hearsay accounts and the evidence of the Bridge’s criminal activity that had been obtained through statements from police officers.

Finally in March we were able to secure ASBOs against each of the Bridges to ensure they stay away from the Wirral for between four and seven years. Although I still cannot identify the anonymous witnesses because of the risk that they are under, acknowledgement should be given to all those who courageously gave evidence. Without them we would have had great difficulty bringing the case to court or achieving the orders in the terms that were issued.