THE BRITISH LOVE OF CRIMINALS AGAIN

In Britain, it is criminals who have the "rights", not ordinary people -- and politically correct British bureaucrats and police know how to ensure that

Two miles from the centre of Liverpool lies a street where no sane family would choose to live. Among the 19 houses that make up Childers Street, a pack of young savages runs wild. Fearless, lawless and sowing misery with a careless abandon, their reign seems uncontested. They shout, fight, steal, drink, vandalise, bully, urinate, abuse, litter and deal drugs. When they are bored they throw a brick through your window. Or through the window of a police car.

These feral teenagers from Europe's future Capital of Culture are not, of course, unique. They have hooded cousins who roam the streets of deprived inner-city communities the length of Britain. What was different about this little no-go world was that after enduring years of intimidation one brave council house resident decided that enough was enough. She had lived in Childers Street, in the Old Swan area of Liverpool, for half a dozen years and she had watched in growing dismay as decent families moved out and the road began its steady descent into dysfunction. June Hopkins (not her real name) is 60. Her husband has a serious heart condition. They felt like prisoners in their own home. She saw a Congolese family petrol-bombed out of their house. She watched children attack an ambulance. She saw a gang surround a man with learning difficulties and beat him to the ground.

At night, the grandmother would lie in bed as underage drinkers swarmed outside. Breaking glass, accompanied by the 2am yells and screams of her neighbours and their friends, often made sleep impossible. So she decided to take a stand. Encouraged by the police and the council, who promised to protect her anonymity, she began to log each incident in a diary provided by the local antisocial behaviour unit. From April this year Mrs Hopkins spent five months recording daily life in Childers Street. As a portrait of life in one corner of 21st-century Britain, it is a study in despair. The authorities, however, were delighted because the diary finally gave them the evidence they needed to apply for antisocial behaviour orders against the ringleaders of the disorder: five male teenagers aged between 13 and 19.

Mrs Hopkins believed, with good reason, that if the families of those five boys discovered the identity of the person who had "grassed them up" then her life would be in danger. As happens in ASBO cases across the country where witnesses fear reprisals, the local authority agreed that her evidence would be presented to the court by what is known as a professional witness, in this case an enforcement officer, Tracey Proud, from its antisocial behaviour unit. The officer presents the evidence to magistrates on behalf of the vulnerable witness. Crucially, disclosure of the evidence must also be made to the defendants when they are served with their summons.

Home Office ASBO guidelines empahsise that "the welfare and safety of residents whose complaints form the basis of any action must at every stage of the process be the first consideration". Councils are told that they have a duty to minimise any potential for witness intimidation; to maintain witness anonymity; and to ensure that it does not "identify them by default (for example through details of location . . . or age)". It would seem difficult to spell out the message more clearly, yet earlier this month the council, with the help of the police, breached the guidelines so crassly that it in effect led the young thugs to Mrs Hopkins's front door.

On Monday, September 11, the council filed five ASBO applications at Liverpool Magistrates' Court. Two days later police officers delivered summonses to five addresses in Childers Street. Within half an hour of the documents dropping through the letter boxes, and with the police nowhere to be seen, a baying mob had gathered outside Mrs Hopkins's home. Why? Because among the forms handed to each boy was a statement signed by Ms Proud that revealed that she was presenting evidence from "witness A", who "wishes to be anonymous for fear of reprisals". Immediately below is a paragraph in which witness A is described as a resident of Childers Street who has lived there for 6« years and is 60 years of age. There are only 19 homes on the street. Everyone knows everyone. Mrs Hopkins, a former care and support worker, had just been grassed up by her own council.

By pure chance, on the afternoon in question she was in hospital with her 58-year-old husband, who had just suffered a suspected heart attack. It was left to her son to face a hate-filled rabble that was demanding blood. Soon, cars drove up to disgorge local hard cases armed with baseball bats and knives, and one man, allegedly, carrying a gun. There was only one way out. Mrs Hopkins was contacted by her family and warned not to come home. The gang was told that the evidence against them would be withdrawn. It was, and the ASBO applications have collapsed.

Mrs Hopkins has been unable to return to the area. Her house is now boarded up and she is living in a temporary safe house provided by a wellwisher. Neither the council nor the police seemed willing this week to accept any responsibility for the potentially life-threatening identification blunder, although each was eager to blame the other. Merseyside Police said that the information in the documents disclosed to the defendants was entirely the responsibility of the local authority. The force also claimed that the officers who had been dealing directly with Childers Street had no idea that the summonses were being delivered on that day. One police source said that Mrs Hopkins had been treated appallingly. "She has a right to be afraid. She's been let down because her identity has been revealed and that has put her in danger."

The area police commander, Chief Superintendent Andy Ward, said in a statement: "We sympathise entirely with this local resident and her family, particularly as she was prepared to take a stand against antisocial behaviour in her area. This application by the council's antisocial behaviour unit has unfortunately led to a witness being vulnerable, something which needs to be avoided at all costs."

Liverpool City Council, by contrast, insisted that its officials had handled the matter by the book and said that the timing of the summons deliveries, earlier than had been scheduled, was the fault of the police. A spokeswoman said: "In every single case, we do our utmost to protect the identity of the complainant. In eight years of enforcing ASBOs, this is the first time an incident like this has happened. However, we have to provide a certain level of detail to the court to prove the alleged incidents took place, which can bring the slight risk that a person's identity could be discovered." Both the police and the council wanted to emphasise their commitment to tackling antisocial behaviour in Childers Street. The council urged local people not to be "put off from providing the information we need" and the police said that they were setting up a "proactive disorder team" to work in the area.

All of which is cold comfort for Mrs Hopkins. Over the years she had seen hundreds of occasions when a police car has visited Childers Street in response to reports of trouble. When the police arrive, the gangs melt away. The car spends perhaps one minute cruising up and down the street, then goes, at which point the teenagers re-emerge. The geography of the sloping street is partly to blame. Bollards and a brick wall at each end mean that the only vehicle access is via a side street halfway up the road, yet there are half a dozen entry and exit routes by foot. Its layout makes Childers Street a magnet for local youths and, as the police have confirmed, offers offenders "the luxury of escape".

One local officer, PC Stephen Duffy, whose sworn statement was to have formed part of the ASBO evidence, said that since April the police had received reports of more than 100 incidents in Childers Street. "The problems . . . consist of throwing missiles at property, being drunk in the street, assaults, setting fire to propery, stealing, riding motorbikes and causing alarm and distress to members of the community," he wrote. He noted one incident that resulted "in a police officer being placed in fear of his safety and receiving hand injuries where he lost the top of his finger". A second reported incident left a fellow officer "in shock after his patrol car was systematically attacked by several males who used bricks to smash the windows of the vehicle". If the police have now been told, for safety reasons, not to visit the street alone at night, what hope is there for a 60-year-old woman?

When Mrs Hopkins talks about her life on Childers Street, it becomes clear that her greatest anger is reserved for the parents who allow their children to run riot and too often take a sick pride in their behaviour. She has a security camera on the wall of her house. Video footage taken during numerous incidents was handed to the council to assist in the ASBO applications. In some night-time scenes, drunken mothers and their beyond-control offspring seem to merge into one mass of churning malevolence. She weeps quietly as she watches it.

Had the ASBOs been granted, they might have been the first step towards cleaning up Childers Street. Those five youths - aged 13, 14, 16, 17 and 19 - would have been banned from associating with each other, from using foul or abusive words or behaviour in public, from riding motorcycles, from being part of a group of more than three people on the street and from engaging "in any behaviour likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress". A breach of the order could have resulted in a custodial sentence. The council also had plans to evict some of the most troublesome families from the road.

Its colossal error in identifying Mrs Hopkins to her tormentors appears, for now, to have reduced such hopes to ashes. She talks of an earlier encounter with one young yob who told her: "The police don't rule our street, the council don't rule our street. This street belongs to us. This is our street." "And he's right. They do," she said yesterday

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