Erekose, I am very sorry to hear that you've had such a bad time over the past 3 years in particular. However, I don't agree that the area was so good in the 1980's.

I've been in Forest Hill since 1971 and I grew up with some complete maniacs, some of whom caused the most horrendous aggravation in the town centre from the late 70's onwards and right through to the mid nineties. Running street battles outside the station with people getting stabbed, tables being ripped off their pedestals in the Wimpy Bar (next door to Sainsburys) and thrown through the large plate glass windows onto the South Circular Road. I was even sitting in my flat on Dartmouth Road one early evening (1990-ish) and there was the most almighty smash. I jumped out onto the flat roof and saw a guy walking up Derby Hill with a mattress that he'd just taken from the shop below after he'd thrown a whole paving slab through the window. Also, at least once a month on a Friday or Saturday night the police had to cordon-off the middle section of Dartmouth Road because of serious fights spilling out from the Malt Shovel (before Question Bar) and Spiggy's cocktail bar at No.73. I won't bore you all with any more.

Having said that, I do believe that there seems to be more 'cowardly' and 'sneaky' types of crime where the culprits pick easy prey and in a strange way I find this abolutely sickening and so much more abhorrent than some of the other things that I've witnessed in the area.