Once
upon a time I owned a bicycle. I owned it for almost one whole
week, and had made one payment on it, when it was stolen from
inside a residential building, just a few feet away from what,
it transpired, was the front door of a convicted bike thief.
This was the same front door which the Metropolitan Police
of Kentish Town, armed with this information, didn't knock
on.
Whilst selling music videos on Camden Market, about ten years
ago, I earned quite a reputable reputation with the local
celebrities. Noel Gallagher was one of my best customers,
as were his Creation comrades Bobbie Gillespie and Alan McGee.
All was dandy, until Mick Jagger decided I was doing him out
of about twelve pence, and had me arrested and my stock seized
by the Kentish Town blue boys.
Some years later, my flat was burgled. The SOCO mob came
down to fingerprint the place, and failed to find any, including
my own, even on a cup I was drinking from as they worked.
A few weeks passed, I spotted an unmistakable item of mine,
that was among the missing manifest, in the window of Kentish
Town Cash Converters. The store manager was able to furnish
me with the name and address of the person who had sold them
the item, which I passed to our local lawmen, who promptly
ignored it.
About nine months later, I was arrested again, for taking
a shortcut through the car park of Kentish Town Police Station.
It was snowing, I had a bad cold, and having walked to the
local Royal Mail sorting office to pick up the post, I took
it upon myself to take a quick route back to Holmes Road through
the car park, turning a ten minute detour into a thirty second
walk. That, it appeared, was an unacceptable offence.
If you live in Hampstead and drive a
4x4 vehicle, make yourself
useful and run over a few drug dealers on your way home.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Odeon cinema in Parkway
to see the new Star Wars movie. It was a late afternoon Friday
show, and being a long movie, meant that I came out of the
cinema just around eight o'clock in the evening. Turning left
into Camden High Street to walk to my flat in Chalk Farm,
I was accosted over and over and over again by increasingly
aggressive drug dealers, dozens of them, lining the entire
distance between Inverness Street and Camden Lock. In broad
daylight. And not a policeman in sight.
Yesterday I witnessed the police seizing a load of merchandise
from Camden traders. Six policemen, with a van.
You can probably see where this is headed.
What the bloody hell are the police doing in Camden? What's
the point in even having them? Why the hell should our taxes
pay their wages? I have one simple message to the Metropolitan
Police Commissioner - get your men to do the job we damn well
pay them for before innocent people start getting hurt. Its
all well and good blaming piracy on organised crime, but disorganised
crime is a serious problem too. You have not managed to "clean
up" King's Cross, as you so claim, all you have done
is disperse the problem further into Camden and Islington.
Act now, lest we start treating you like the witless, uninformed
fools you seem to be.
As for the Camden drug problem, all we can do is implore
those who use drugs not to buy them from these street hustlers.
This isn't a judgement, do whatever you like, but please,
take away the demand and get it off our High Street.
And if you live in Hampstead and drive a 4x4 vehicle, make
yourself useful and run over a few drug dealers on your way
home. Everyone knows the only thing these vehicles are good
for is man-slaughtering pedestrians. Earn your right to drive
one. It's your civic duty.
Jude Rawlins
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