ANTI-SOCIAL behaviour is on the increase, according to local police officers who patrol the streets of Ross-on-Wye

PC Simon Harradine explained to Ross Town Council that young people had recently been caught egging walls and during last summer, festival goers were spotted weeing in people's gardens.

PC Harradine said that at large events such as Ollie Fest, now Y Fest, that police have had to impose Dispersal Orders to prevent people from re-entering a specific area over a set amount of time to prevent significant and prolonged antisocial behaviour.

The officer outlined that as part of the problem-solving initiative for Ross, a retail action plan was devised in collaboration with businesses in town in which police surveyed the Ross business community with help, reassurance and education in terms of reporting crime.

“Currently the statistics don’t tally up with the perceived fear of anti-social behaviour,” PC Harradine said.

“It is known there is a lot of petty shoplifting going on, but we don’t get the number of thefts actually being reported to us.

“We are in the process of making sure that traders are aware of how simple the reporting process is, particularly if there is no identifiable suspect.

“It is important that these crimes are reported so that we have a better overall picture of the data of the thefts taking place.”

Since the initial surveys were carried out, follow up measures have been taking place in known hot spots of previous logged incidents. This is primarily the areas of Broad Street, High Street and the Market Place areas.

PC Harradine said that in cases like eggs being thrown at walls and shoplifting by youths that it was common practice to record these as criminal offences with escalation letters being sent out to the perpetrators. He added that the police try methods like this to avoid giving young people a criminal record for as long as possible,

PC Harradine clarified: "In terms of anti-social behaviour, there have been numerous letters issued, which explains the process if the perpetrator doesn’t address their behaviour before being criminalised.

"The difficulty, particularly with 12, 13, 14-year-olds, is once there's a criminal disposal on their record, they feel like they've got nothing to lose. The only motivation we can offer towards keeping their record clean is to prevent future offending, so there's a lot of work to try and educate them.

“But what we have been doing is issuing letters, which explain the process and pointing out the fact that they are becoming closer to committing criminal offences with their anti-social behaviour.

"Anti-social behaviour starts to go into criminal damage with things like eggs that dry and corrode paint.

“Criminal offences are recorded in those instances and there have been escalation letters which lead up towards prohibitions from entering certain areas."

Councillor Milly Boylan asked about the possibility of placing mosquito alarms - devices which emit a high-frequency sound that in general, can only be heard by youths - in some areas to help deter loitering.

PC Harradine said that it hoped that a new police officer is expected to join the Ross Safer Neighbourhood Team during the summer.