The boundary police can have new powers and has obtained, upon application and pressure from residents, a dispersal order for the Boundary Estate. That gives police the power to ask 2 people or more to leave the area and not return for a specified time. Also young people under the age of 16, who are without adult supervision can be taken home.
As a parent and grandparent, resident and Neighbourhood Watch coordinator I welcome this new initiative. What families can do to help is to make agreements with their own children to be at home at certain times and if not to be more strict. If all parents know where their kids are at all times, we should not have these problems. Having heard that on some estates kids play outside till 1 – 2 am in the morning, I ask myself why this is tolerated by parents. It is simply not in keeping with our normal lifestyles that kids run wild till the middle of the night and a matter of normal discipline that children should be at home in the evenings and get ready for bed to go to school the next morning and even in the holidays, children are safer and better off at home in the evenings normally.