Police blow over loss of injunctions
POLICE chiefs today admitted the loss of civil injunctions has “reduced their ability to control” dangerous gangland figures in the West Midlands.
Police and city council chiefs had hoped to pioneer civil injunctions to ban suspects from going into certain streets or from hanging around together.
But the legal crackdown hit a setback in January when a High Court judge dismissed the idea.
The interim orders had been credited with controlling the behaviour of the most risky individuals and helping reduce the threat of gun crime.
Soon after the judge rejected the new approach, police figures showed that gang-related incidents started to rise.
Council chiefs have appealed against the decision but city gangbusters will not know if the legal challenge has been successful until October.
Meanwhile, West Midlands Police chiefs were today continuing with an operation to halt a fresh cycle of gun crime that has claimed the life of one man and left four others wounded in a series of shootings in the city.
Dimitri Foskin, 24, was shot dead in Newtown on August 23 in the latest of a spate of suspected gang-related gun crime to rock Birmingham since July.
Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport said it would never be possible to say whether the current problem would have emerged had the injunctions been suspended.
She added: “It is right to say that the loss of these powers has reduced our ability to control the behaviour of some people involved in areas around guns and gangs.
“The injunctions were very successful and we saw a significant reduction in gang-related activity.”
