Safe to speak

Nobody wants to be called a ‘grass’. And residents of north Liverpool, plagued over the past couple of years by a series of high-profile, gang-related incidents - including the shooting of schoolboy Rhys Jones - are no different.

For a long time, fear of reprisals - and being labelled a grass - left members of the Croxteth and Norris Green communities feeling too intimidated to go to the police with intelligence on the crimes.

Then a resident and representative of the community in Croxteth approached Cobalt Housing Association, seeking additional support for witnesses and victims of crime.

Cobalt, a north Liverpool housing association with 5,600 properties, responded to the request by launching Making WAVES in March this year, with the aim of combating intimidation to bring about greater community safety.

The £150,000 two-year pilot project - which stands for Witness and Victims Encouragement Support - is funded by Cobalt Housing and the Liverpool Council-run initiative, City Safe.

This money is paying for the launch and publicity costs, target hardening (making people’s homes safer) and staff costs.

The WAVES team includes members of the community, City Safe staff and two officers from Merseyside police and Merseyside fire service.

The team’s first task was to gauge the scale of the problem. John Moores University was asked to assess the level of intimidation experienced in four neighbourhoods: Croxteth Park, Croxteth, Norris Green and Fazakerley.

The findings are startling. Crime had been witnessed in their neighbourhood by 45 per cent of residents and 17 per cent of these witnesses had experienced intimidation.

The picture for victims was as bad with 48 per cent of residents saying that they had been a victim of crime in their neighbourhood.

Of these, 40 per cent had experienced intimidation and 32 per cent of the victim’s family members had also suffered intimidation. In 86 per cent of cases, that intimidation was verbal abuse and property damage.

Gathering intelligence

The WAVES police and fire officers have a long history of working in the area and have gained both the respect and trust of the community.

Once a witness or victim case has been referred to them, the officers contact the individuals and interview them. They use a score-card developed by the Office for Criminal Justice and Reform to assess the person’s level of risk and decide what action to take. This ranges from installing security devices to emergency rehousing and referral to victim support or to Merseyside police.

WAVES also offers witnesses and victims of crime free holistic therapies, such as Indian head massage, as they often suffer from anxiety or stress as a result of their experiences.

Once WAVES has taken on a case, Cobalt Housing contacts the relevant agencies and ensures that they provide the individuals involved with the necessary level of support.

The officers maintain weekly contact with the witness or victim and the risk assessment process is constantly reviewed to address any change in their needs. This level of support remains until the individual decides it is no longer needed.

Should a case go to court, Cobalt ensures that the person being dealt with is familiar with court procedures and arranges for them to visit the court before the trial. We discuss the court process with them at length and prepare them so that the experience is as comfortable as possible.
The first quarter results for the WAVES project have been fantastic.

So far we have dealt with 62 cases, 50 per cent of which were victims of crime, 21 per cent were witnesses and 29 per cent had been both witnesses and victims of crime - including anti-social behaviour, vandalism and burglary.

At this stage of the WAVES project we could not ask for better results and this month, John Moores University is contacting all the witnesses and victims we have dealt with to make sure that the project is making people feel safer.

It is only once we have received this feedback on how much safer people feel, that we’ll know whether the project is really making a difference to theses neighbourhoods.

Steph Harrison is director of housing at Cobalt Housing Association and project leader of the Making WAVES programme

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