Council considers eviction for family in suicide case
Police and a local authority are considering calls to evict a family whose son was accused of helping to drive a mother to suicide.
Fiona Pilkington set fire to herself and her disabled daughter after complaining of years of abuse.
Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council and the local police are considering punishments for the Simmons family after further accusations of anti-social behaviour were made against some of them.
Other residents of Barwell in Leicestershire, where the family are council tenants, have begun a petition calling for the family’s eviction.
A spokesman for the council said they and the police are investigating allegations of anti-social behaviour made in recent weeks.
He said: ‘Both sides will sit down and assess the strength of evidence and nature of complaints and decide what are the appropriate actions to take. They range from warning letters, parental contracts, anti-social behaviour contracts or injunctions and of course possession orders are one of those options.’
He said the family had been served with a possession order before but it was suspended for six months on condition of good behaviour. The family upheld the conditions and the order then expired, he added. One of the children had also had an anti-social behaviour injunction but this too has expired.
He said most of the children involved in harassing Ms Pilkington had either improved their behaviour after their parents were sent warning letters while the remaining ‘one or two cases’ had been served with injunctions and others had since moved away from the street.
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Readers' comments (9)
kass | 01/10/2009 10:46 am
Where are the prosectuions for council and police officers who allowed these families to act like they did in the first place?
any action to punish the direct antisocialo perpretators however late is urgent and welcome. But let's not forget that council and police ALLOWED them to do what they did to this poor woman and her disabled daughter. So is any action is ever going to be taken against council officers and police officers?
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DavidJ | 01/10/2009 11:11 am
For once I agree with Kass!! Any action needs to be swift, however I doubt that will happen. This is a real case of shutting the gate after the horse has not only bolted, but also has vanished over the hill!! I was staggered to read on the BBC website that the perpertrator of this henus event was now complaining that HE was being bullied as a consequence of his actions. Having read some of the diary entries by the victims I felt truly saddened of the way they were treated. Apologies from the authorities have come all too late, and the fact I read they have now stepped up patrols within the areas where these events happens goes to show the lack of understadning and suffering that victims of anti-social behaviour are put through. However, my sceptical side says no lessons will be learnt from this event.
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kass | 01/10/2009 12:54 pm
"DavidJ | Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:11 GMT...However, my sceptical side says no lessons will be learnt from this event..."" the only way lessons will be learnt is if police and council officers involved in all this, past or present, are duly prosecuted. No prosecutions of them = no lessons learnt.
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| 02/10/2009 5:55 pm
All the above comments are spot on. The attitude of the spineless and supine council officers beggars belief yet is completely typical of the timeservers who tend to get employed in such positions. Would any non-council officer or bleeding heart lefty honestly think that "warning letters, parental contracts, anti-social behaviour contracts or injunctions" are an appropriate response to the feral scum who effectively tortured their neighbours to death? There really should be mass sackings and prosecutions for corporate manslaughter all round with jail terms for the timeservers who allowed this to happen.
That said, something must be done about the security of tenure issue. As pointed out in posts ad nauseum, the sheer difficulty of getting Ground 1 or Ground 8 Possession on the Grounds of ASB is a massive impediment to those rare officers who can be bothered. The removal of problem tenants must be disconnected from the spineless and supine judiciary who refuse to grant eviction orders without massive cost to the taxpayer and to the victims of crime. And ASB is crime. Localis are right. All secure and assured tenancies must be converted to AST so that eviction can take place on 28 days notice, without the involvement of the judiciary at all. Only then can these monsters be removed. And removed. And removed again. Until they change their behaviour or until social services take the kids. Anything else is unfair on the rest of the community and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the feral scum, everytime.
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Joe Penguin Jnr | 03/10/2009 0:56 am
I am told that under the 1998 crime and disorder act section 17 is worth reading as it legislates for local police and local authorities to do the job of anti social behaviour prevention and enforcement. It would appear, given the thirty three complaints and requests for help, that they have failed to work to this responsibilty?
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Joe Halewood | 05/10/2009 9:57 am
I read the report above and noted the coments then did a quick search on the case, prompted by the fact it seemed there were gangs of youths and at least one adult, yet it seemed one family was being singled out. The coroners comments in the link below are very revealing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6839752.ece
The police are roundly criticised and it seems they and even the local MP did pretty much nothing at all.
Yet this brief link with verbatim reporting at the coroners court shows very clearly what the police think - it was asb not a crime is their attitude!! It is down to the local officers discretion to decide - so no standard policy!! Or put in the easiest terms the police dont give a stuff and simply seek to transfer these crimes onto social landlords.
This is the problem in a nutshell - the police just dont give a damn and its easier to pass the buck to a body (landlords) that cant do bugger all about. Anti Social Behaviour is a modern semantic construct - call a crime by anothertime and we dont have to investigate this a a crime...and we can pass the buck onto somene else.... wow the Police spin doctors and budget holders must love whoever invented that term!!!!
Tenants and the public are being hoodwinked and short changed by the police and still (erroneously) blame their landlords. Tenants and landlords should unite in a campaign to get rid of asb as a term and get the police to do what we all pay them for, deal with crime and its prevention.
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kass | 06/10/2009 2:03 pm
Joe Halewood | Mon, 5 Oct 2009 09:57 GMT...
I agree with your comment here... But you also say that (social) Landlords and tenants should unite to get the police to deal with crime which, as you point out, is their job... This is not possible in present circumstances. Social landlords have legally accepted and are legally now reposnsible for dealing with asb. In the present situation ins asb cases the landlords ARE the police.
Once the police has deemed a case if for the landlord to deall with there is nothing a tenant can do. Any complaint against the police for not doing their job or against the landlord for doing (or not doing) the police job will not stand up. The only thing you have any power to do as a tenant to get any attention is to set fire to yourself.
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Joe Halewood | 06/10/2009 2:47 pm
Kass no thats incorrect. Criminal activity and responsibility cannot be pased from the police to anyone. And if you read the reference to the coroners case you will see that police have responsibility clearly stated giving referencs to specific acts too.
It may be th case that landlords dont ant to upset police and /or feel it is too hard to do so, but landlords are landlords (housing providers) not housing police and criminal activity and its prevention is the job of the police
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kass | 06/10/2009 5:00 pm
Joe Halewood | Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:47 GMT
I agree with you, the police and only the police should deal with crime. That's what I am saying.
I am also saying that in the subject we are covering here the police is refusing to do so and say the landlord should do it.
The landlords and the police work together, the tenants are their customers.
In most cases the victims, to be victimised in the first place, are weaker than the aggressors (that's why these cowards persecute them, because the victims cannot defend themselves and no one is giving them effective protection)
Now I am saying there is no way most of the victimis can embark in a series of campains and complaints both against the police and the landlords to change this state of affairs. Most of victims do not have the physical and emotional psycological energy to get into endless activity requring all sorts of strenghts they do not just have or has been taken away from them.
Victims are or are brought to mental ilnness by persecution and lack of help, apart from physical exhaustion. To expect that a mother with a disabled daughter would have the energy to carry out endless campaigns and complaints after years of victimisation is just too much. In this state of affairs I am only surpised not many more tenants commit suicide or more extreme acts. Or may they do but we are not been told.
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