Drug aspects aside, it is difficult to know how to handle these things best. I read too much in the papers about people being injured or dying after getting involved to want to be a hero. We had a lot of trouble for a while with groups of youths, including cannabis smoking. Getting a response from the police was very patchy - basically unless you could say your life was in danger it seemed very low priority. I remember getting really annoyed when after one non-response I received two phone calls the following day from adminstrators seeking to record important stuff like my age and ethnicity and what I thought of the 'response'!! It didn't take me many words.......

We did seek and got sensible advice from Safer Neighbourhoods although by their own admission they were woefully understaffed. One thing we were advised to do was to put in multiple calls to the police as this upped our prority!! I can see from the police's point of view that if they move it from one spot it will inevitably surface in another so it is a no-win situation for them really.

Police did manage to arrive at the right time on one occasion and wheel a few into (no doubt temporary) custody. This didn't remove the problem right away, but it just seemed to die away as naturally as it started. I did go out and chat to a small group one sunny afternoon when there was no serrious threat. They were a bit cocky to be sure but were in fact OK guys and for a while used to say hello if I passed them on the street! I think a bit of rapport like that helps -I tried to explain as fairly as I could out point of view and I think made some impact. However I would never have tried that on a dark night with a larger group. Simply not worth the risk.