Neighbours on two streets in Hampstead are calling on police to deal with two alleged drug addicts blighting their lives.
Dozens of people attended Hampstead's Safer Neighbourhood Panel Meeting on Tuesday (October 17) to voice concerns about antisocial behaviour (ASB) involving two individuals in South Hill Park, Willoughby Rod and Heath Hurst Road.
Neighbours said despite reporting the issues, nothing had been done despite the police knowing "exactly who they are".
A man and woman reportedly sit in people's doorways taking drugs "day and night".
Acting Sergeant Jason Vickers encouraged people to report antisocial behaviour, saying: "The more you report things to us the bigger picture you get on the ward."
But Susan West, chair of the panel, said she had sent him two excel spreadsheets covering South Hill Park and Heath Hurst Road that day and would be sending a third for Willoughby Road.
She added: "Two individuals seem to be around three points where they are begging, rough sleeping in private property, they are consuming drugs openly, they are buying drugs openly and they are fighting with each other.
"I sent a video of a male seriously assaulting a female in Willoughby Road and I was utterly shocked by that."
She said she'd seen a list of police CAD numbers, "where people have reported, and we are reporting".
She added: "It's not an issue of people not bothering. We've been doing it over and over again and it's not being collated.
"This is not something vague, it's very specific. We have data, I think we have done our bit."
Echoing other residents she said the couple were "smart" hiding their drugs on the heath so not to be caught if stopped and searched.
One woman said: "They are not injecting paracetamol, we need to know what information you need."
A man said: "We are talking about two poor people who are symptoms of a systemic problem.
"It's to do with growing loss of control of public spaces and drug networks.
"I imagine there are probably drug intelligence servers and we should be talking about this in a joined up way. These are people who are clearly criminals making a lot of money out of this."
Another neighbour said: "There's no hard dividing line between one kind of misbehaviour and another. A normal antisocial behaviour can turn into violence and you'll find that most residents are scared of that because you don't know what's coming next.
"Antisocial behaviour should be treated with further seriousness knowing there's a bad potential lying behind it."
Cllr Linda Chung, Liberal Democrat representative, said: "Something is going terribly wrong here, there's no action from the police which puts you in disrepute.
"I've always banged on, for a long time, there should be more communication with the council because we're also responsible for antisocial behaviour and we're doing something wrong."
Cllr Stephen Stark, Conservative, said: "I always thought if you report a crime it gets logged and the more people who report the same crime it goes up the agenda."
Sgt Vickers said ASB "isn't necessarily a crime", but added police have powers to deal with it, such as stop and search or arrest "if we catch them in the act".
He said on the system there was no ASB difference between "urinating against a door or drug dealing".
He added: "The first thing we can do is identify the individuals and issue an ASB warning."
He said it was "the start of a long process towards an ASB order through the magistrates court.
Susan West ended the meeting. She said: "Make that a priority to locate these people, identify them, then perhaps another meeting with you and community safety in Camden for a next step.
"We must not drop the ball, continue to drop the ball on this."
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