Antisocial Behaviour

Inspired by 2 events which happened to me this weekend.

Yesterday I was in Bristol walking back from the football, when 2 kids on a scooter tried to grab my phone and then hit me on the back of the head, and today when on the bus kids started chucking stuff at people on the top deck of my bus- which ended in my confronting them (luckily they were fairly young 11-14 but any older or numerous and I would have been in trouble).

I'm a man in my 30s who's not small (but also not big- at least height wise), but the whole country seems to be getting worse. Pre pandemic I never had any interaction with the police at all but in the last 18 months, I've called 999 once (to report on kids chucking liquid at people), given a witness statement for an assault of a railway worker, and then the events above. This is just the police as well, we've also had neighbours we had to keep reporting to the council for playing loud base heavy music at all hours of the day. The amount of banana splits who seem to play stuff without headphones on trains and buses seems to have increased ten fold.

Are things getting worse, or was I just sheltered for the last decade (I haven't even moved)- what stories do you have?

That’s gooseberry fool what happened to you in Bristol, not had many issues but don’t go out much these days and when I do go to the football I go with my dad and avoid area’s where I know there is trouble.

Glad you are okay though, that’s the main thing.

For me, the antisocial behaviour in this neighbourhood slowly got worse and worse over a prologned period and ultimately peaked during the first lockdown when Stool Bloke hosted his carbecue piss up on VE day 2020.

Since then, Stool Bloke has departed, i'm pretty sure Degenerate Neighbour Bloke has also left the street (just his mother seems to be in next door now), some of the obnoxious kids have moved on, and things are generally a lot quieter now.

Out and about i can't say i've noticed a great deal of difference, there were dickheads around pre-pandemic, and there are still dickheads post pandemic.

I've not particularly noticed it getting any worse, but then, I had to put up with a lot of antisocial behaviour for years in the public library where I worked. Over the years I was threatened because I dared kicked someone out for swearing (after multiple warnings), was involved in a fight between two customers arguing over £10 (chairs were involved and the police were called. Management were useless and I got no support during or after the incident). Teenagers/young adults absolutely swamping the children's library, swearing, messing about, obstructing spaces. Despite complaints from staff and members of the public it took months for anything to be done. When I wrote in one (of many) incident reports that I felt threatened and unsafe, I was pulled into the office and asked to change my statement into something less inflammatory before it got sent to county HQ. We had a panic button in the children's library but were told after the incidents that it had been disconnected years before and nobody had told us . Eventually, after a lot of begging from staff, radios were issued to all desks so we could call security directly.

At it's worse we had to hire an extra security guard and had two on duty at all times for a few months because the number of incidents in the library on a daily basis were just too much for one person. We also had regular visits from the security of the local shopping centre (at the time we were subcontracting out security to them). We also ended up having regular patrols from the police in the form of PCSO's. Incidents around this time included fighting, threatening staff, drinking alcohol, suspected drug dealing, drug taking, a lot of theft, internet porn and general, "milder" antisocial behaviour like playing music loud, chair jousting, a lot of swearing. A lot of regulars stopped coming in because of it. We had high hopes when a youthclub opened in town but that just made the antisocial behaviour worse on the nights the club was open. It was genuinely one of the worst times during my time working there and that's saying a lot. That was about 10 or 11 years ago and I've never experienced anything that bad since then. We've had peaks and troughs with behaviour since then but nothing as bad as those 6 months.

From my experience it’s getting worse, particularly in the teen and 20s age groups. The stuff I’ve seen from them recently I had never experienced a decade ago. A particular highlight a few months ago was a group of about 50 young teens (not an exaggeration), oldest 16yrs with some as young as 10 years old storming a McDonald’s. Running behind the counter, stealing food, taking food off people’s tables, throwing stuff around, wreaked the toilets. Then moved onto the cinema running into screens, trying to attack staff who were blocking their way.

Whilst the majority of kids and young adults are still fine upstanding members of the community, I’m finding that the pool of ignorant dickheads is getting larger.

The culture of filming and encouraging the idiots I also feel is helping to fuel many issues.

Lot of numpties riding around Edinburgh in unregistered dirt bikes just now... other than that, same old?

My experience is the opposite but I think that reflects that I grew up in a large, rough, inner-London council estate.

I was a victim of attempted muggings on several occasions in my teenage years but nothing like that has occurred in my adult life. London feels safer to me because I don't live in a dangerous part of it anymore and I'm probably just about big enough to not be an easy target.

For me it all seems pretty constant since the pandemic, haven't noticed any real difference, although I don't live in a built up area. It's a fairly quiet village with a low crime rate anyway.

Grumpy David wrote:My experience is the opposite but I think that reflects that I grew up in a large, rough, inner-London council estate.

I was a victim of attempted muggings on several occasions in my teenage years but nothing like that has occurred in my adult life. London feels safer to me because I don't live in a dangerous part of it anymore and I'm probably just about big enough to not be an easy target.

Where did you/now live out of interest? I live in Bermondsey/Rotherhithe way, there's groups of kids towards London Bridge who will raid shops together- this seems to be an ongoing thing and seems to happen at a much larger scale elsewhere in London.

Ecno wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:My experience is the opposite but I think that reflects that I grew up in a large, rough, inner-London council estate.

I was a victim of attempted muggings on several occasions in my teenage years but nothing like that has occurred in my adult life. London feels safer to me because I don't live in a dangerous part of it anymore and I'm probably just about big enough to not be an easy target.

Where did you/now live out of interest? I live in Bermondsey/Rotherhithe way, there's groups of kids towards London Bridge who will raid shops together- this seems to be an ongoing thing and seems to happen at a much larger scale elsewhere in London.

Grew up in the council estate that gets mentioned roughly 12 minutes 50 seconds in this video:



I'm in-between Wimbledon and Tooting now.

The rushing into shops in enormous numbers to shoplift seems like a relatively new method, I've seen clips of these shoplifting tactics used on those money-laundering American Candy stores that litter Oxford Street.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the unintended consequences of lockdowns was a rise in anti-social behaviour (and also violent dog attacks which are definitely more common now). So I could well believe your recent experience reflects a broader picture rather than just a 'wrong place, wrong time' situation.

It's obviously gooseberry fool and horrible when it happens to you.

But if there's one constant in human history, it's people (especially as they get older) thinking things are getting worse, that kids are more disrespectful and society is crumbling due to a lack of morals.

The level of antisocial behaviour has been more or less the same wherever I’ve lived. You’d think I’d have grown out of it by now.

In my teens (25 years ago) I worked in food retail in Bristol. In the four years I worked there I had people try to stab me on four separate occasions, had my head kicked in multiple times, saw members of staff beaten until they were unrecognisable, got spat on multiple times (saliva, phlegm AND blood for the trifecta!) and had a junkie piece of gooseberry fool force my girlfriend at the time to open her mouth so he could put a gun in it, because he couldn’t find me that night. I still deal with a fair bit of the ol’ PTSD from my time living and working there. So for me I don’t think things are necessarily worse than they have been, but I’ll admit my experience isn’t typical so my perspective is skewed. Being the victim of gooseberry fool like that makes you feel like it’s absolutely rife, when in hindsight it was clear they targeted me specifically.

What’s absolutely certain though is we’ve had twelve years of austerity and underfunding eroding everything from education to healthcare to benefits and poverty’s a much bigger issue than it was 25 years. All those things will feed directly into crime and antisocial behaviour, and with how badly the police have been gutted faith in them is at a low point, so people aren’t reporting a lot of stuff they otherwise would be. That makes statistics almost meaningless.

rinks wrote:The level of antisocial behaviour has been more or less the same wherever I’ve lived. You’d think I’d have grown out of it by now.

Prototype wrote:Lot of numpties riding around Edinburgh in unregistered dirt bikes just now... other than that, same old?

That's defo also same old

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:From my experience it’s getting worse, particularly in the teen and 20s age groups. The stuff I’ve seen from them recently I had never experienced a decade ago. A particular highlight a few months ago was a group of about 50 young teens (not an exaggeration), oldest 16yrs with some as young as 10 years old storming a McDonald’s. Running behind the counter, stealing food, taking food off people’s tables, throwing stuff around, wreaked the toilets. Then moved onto the cinema running into screens, trying to attack staff who were blocking their way.

Whilst the majority of kids and young adults are still fine upstanding members of the community, I’m finding that the pool of ignorant dickheads is getting larger.

The culture of filming and encouraging the idiots I also feel is helping to fuel many issues.

I remember that first para happening jn the edinburgh BK when i was a teen.

Gideon wrote:In my teens (25 years ago) I worked in food retail in Bristol. In the four years I worked there I had people try to stab me on four separate occasions, had my head kicked in multiple times, saw members of staff beaten until they were unrecognisable, got spat on multiple times (saliva, phlegm AND blood for the trifecta!) and had a junkie piece of gooseberry fool force my girlfriend at the time to open her mouth so he could put a gun in it, because he couldn’t find me that night. I still deal with a fair bit of the ol’ PTSD from my time living and working there. So for me I don’t think things are necessarily worse than they have been, but I’ll admit my experience isn’t typical so my perspective is skewed. Being the victim of gooseberry fool like that makes you feel like it’s absolutely rife, when in hindsight it was clear they targeted me specifically.

What’s absolutely certain though is we’ve had twelve years of austerity and underfunding eroding everything from education to healthcare to benefits and poverty’s a much bigger issue than it was 25 years. All those things will feed directly into crime and antisocial behaviour, and with how badly the police have been gutted faith in them is at a low point, so people aren’t reporting a lot of stuff they otherwise would be. That makes statistics almost meaningless.

Jesus wtf, that sounds awful.

It's much the same to me as it always was.

Although I have noticed driving has been worse since the pandemic hit. Jumping red lights, doing more dangerous things etc.

Ever since I dropped that bag of teabags, i've found that the pigeons are louder than they've ever been. Bring back national service!

Not quite the sort of thing I expect you're talking about, but the amount of dog gooseberry fool littering the pavements in the NW2 area of London is disgusting. Absolute scumbag banana splits, who probably struggle wiping their own rotten arseholes, casually leaving steaming piles of dog gooseberry fool everywhere. I've attributed it to the increase in the number of lockdown dogs.