Police presence at teen gig is absurd

2:41pm Monday 25th February 2008

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I feel compelled to write to you after picking my daughter up from Stourbridge Rock Cafe 2000 on Wednesday January 30 with regards the ridiculous and unnecessary police presence at the venue for these young kids.

Four policeman stood on the pavement and police van with other officers inside, on the car park.

Good grief, my daughter is only 16 and a half and has been going there with her friend for nearly three years. One hundred and fifty to 200 kids between 14 and 17 in a contained area away from the town centre, away from houses having a good time listening to their type of music.

Judge all the cars that turn up, myself of course included, to take them home at 10pm.

They are not sold alcohol and I have never seen a group of individuals knocking seven bells out of each other.

I'm sure it may occasionally be a handbag scuffle but these are not the hardcore hooligans who stand around on street corners every night.

I and like minded parents wouldn't let our daughters go if this were the case.

I was so nearly tempted to go up to the officers and tell them to go catch some criminals but undoubtedly that would have been me in the van and a night in the cells!

So dear letter readers be sure that next time you come home to find your house burgled and are given a crime number because the police are too busy, next time your car is being vandalised in front of your very eyes and the police don't turn up and you are mugged by knifepoint at the cash machine console yourself that the tough police presence set up on a Wednesday night is so these naughty children, the teeny terrors are getting the close scrutiny their behaviour warrants.

Feel any safer citizens?

The police closed Picture House to the younger kids, my 15 year daughter liked going there, because I was told, trouble at the bus terminal from kids outside of the area.

The owners of Picture House told me this when I asked them.

And now the police, I believe, are obviously looking for trouble where there isn't any to try to close Rock Cafe 2000.

The police need to leave these kids alone, break up the hoodie gangs of between a dozen that loiter on the street corners and, well I might as well say it again, catch some criminals.

CM Stevens-Wood, Halesowen