Estate where hope has had no chance

It's flashback time outside Peckham Library. In the late afternoon sunshine an 11-year-old Nigerian girl is playing around on her scooter. She is by herself, carefree and smiling, wondering if she can get close enough to the news cameras set up on the square to get her face on television.

Cue memories of another young Nigerian who once played outside that same library. His memory is preserved forever in imperfect black and white, fuzzy images of a boy skipping from stone to stone. Damilola playing, Damilola on his way home: Damilola before he died.

It is an instructive lesson to follow in the footsteps of Damilola's last journey, from the vibrant colours and award-winning architecture of the library to the dark, fetid stairwell where he bled to death. It is a journey that starts in light and hope, in the optimism that even a depressed inner-city area like Peckham can be transformed with money and well-meaningprojects: it ends in the bleak reality of the North Peckham estate, where hope - like Damilola himself - has never really had much of a chance. Never was that more true than last night, when the people of Peckham greeted the Old Bailey verdict with a mixture of disgust and grim resignation. Like Richard and Gloria Taylor, they were desperate for a result, for a verdict that would give them the answers they have been waiting for, but for the last few weeks they have been increasingly resigned to the fact that that was unlikely to happen.

"A lot of people are expressing disgust that the police have once again bungled a case where someone was murdered and they could not find the perpetrators," said Mike Rahman, development manager of the estates' tenants' and residents' forum. Brian Carney, who manages a community centre, said: "People round here are absolutely demoralised. Everyone thinks the police just messed it up. That's it now, no one else will come forward. They will be too scared of the consequences."

Start walking from Peckham Library and it really is possible to believe that things are getting better, that the massive £260 million regeneration project to knock down the old tower blocks and put people in new homes is making a difference.

Outside the smart new houses on the Renaissance development, nice shiny cars stand alongside well-tended front gardens. Proud fathers show off their babies to the neighbours.

Nathan Smart is one young black man who believes things have changed since Damilola's death. "It's quieter and more safe," said Nathan, 17, who is trying to find a job in a sports shop. "Kids can play where they want. Even my cousins play about in the dark and nothing happens to them, they are only eight and 10. They are changing stuff round here, like the parks are getting better.

"But the verdict will make a lot of people very sad. The boys were friends of mine and I don't think they did it. It's much better round here now so maybe it doesn't matter so much that no one's gone to prison."

Round the corner a little girl on a mountain bike is cycling along the pavement when she finds her path blocked by a pedestrian. She slows down and asks, with impeccable politeness: "Excuse me please?" The man looks round, smiles and steps out of the way. As the young girl, now also smiling, cycles past him, she adds: "Thank you very much".

But no one should be fooled: it's not all parks and nicely brought up little girls. Chris McNelis, 16, saw a man mugged only the day before yesterday. He was not surprised - crime is just as much of a part of life now as it has ever been. The outcry over Damilola's death, the urban regeneration, the money injected into community projects; none have made a difference to Chris.

"There's still just as much robbing and fighting going on. Nothing's changed and nothing's going to change. It's the same all over North Peckham. I don't like living round here. There are too many gangs and too much robbing going on. I go to school so I can get out of here."

North Peckham is not a big place. In fact, if robbers are not known by their victims, then they are likely to have mutual friends. This bizarre environment actually saved Chris from being robbed.

"Gangs pick on boys and rob them for their phones and money," he said. "They tried it with me but they didn't get anything. Three of them were trying to get my money but I said no. Then a boy I know who knew them came over and it was sorted. They stopped after that."

In McCabe's Tavern, a traditional pub with a friendly Irish landlord, the early evening drinkers are in and already making jokes about the image of Peckham being painted in the media. "It's a no-go area round here," one says sarcastically.

"This place is an oasis." Another says, more seriously: "Nothing's changed. It's still the same old place. It'll take more than new houses to make a difference."

On the pub's large television the news starts and conversation stops. The lead story, of course, is the end of the Damilola trial. The drinkers are transfixed, the only noise they make is the occasional disappointed tut. They are not happy with the verdicts. "They haven't even mentioned the marble in his throat," says one drinker. "How can he have fallen over if he had a marble in his throat?"

When the TV reporter is shown walking around a nearby estate with a local girl, one regular laughs as she tells him about crime in the area. It turns out he knows her well. "What she hasn't said is that her brother used to rob people," he says.

It was fear that made the police's job so hard, fear of recrimination from the young hoodlums who rule the estate with violence. That fear shows no sign of having gone away.

Outside the one-time home of the brothers who were acquitted yesterday - a groundfloor council flat in a modern six-storey block - a teenager in the Peckham boys' uniform of shellsuit trousers and trainers refused point blank to give an insight into the feelings of the brothers' neighbours. Why not? Was he scared of them? "Of course I am," he said. "I'm not stupid. They are bad news. I can't say anything about them. If they get my name I'm in trouble."

The fear and the violence mean that there is only one lesson the youngsters on the estate need to learn: how to survive. Nia Benjamin, 39, a community worker at the Sojourner Truth community centre, said: "Round here you've got to safeguard yourself by wearing the right clothes, being part of the right group. People from outside the area, they walk differently, they dress differently, they look nervous. A lot of the kids are able to pick out who is not from the area. Dress is a big thing. If you've not got the right trainers, if you've not got something which gives you respect in the eyes of your peers, then you're a target."

It was always hard to find anyone on the estate who had much faith in the police: with the not guilty verdicts it has not got any easier. Sarah, an 18-year-old white girl, was chased by her black neighbour and his mates, a terrifying ordeal which forced her to take refuge in a shop. "I wouldn't go to the police because they won't do nothing," she said. "They write it down on the computer, take your name and address. Then you don't hear from them again."

To a streetwise girl like her the reasons for the high levels of crime are blindingly obvious "It's drugs, and nothing to do. All you can do round here is go out and have a drink. I could nick a phone and sell it to someone in 10 minutes - then get puff in the next 10 minutes."

Even the elderly have little time for the police. Joe Pallas, 74, said: "Nothing has changed at all. What did I see today? Two policemen walking. 'Good afternoon,' I said, 'What are you doing here?'

"'Why?' they said. 'Well,' I said, 'you're the first police I've seen around here in 26 years.'"

Norman Mattis, 38, coaches football at the Bradfield Youth & Community Centre. As young people arrived, each one gave him a friendly greeting before paying their 50p entrance fee.

He said: "If Damilola was alive he would probably be here because this is where the kids from around here go. The police should not close the case. A young kid has died and his mother is in mourning. They should come back into the community and get some concrete evidence. They should have had more evidence. Everything that goes on in Peckham, someone sees it. But they don't want to come forward because they don't trust the police."

Gary Barnett, 32, who also coaches football at the centre, said: "The whole communityknows who did it. The police did not do a good job. I don't think the police are in tune with the community. That's why there's no trust between them. The area is improving. The houses are proper living places and there are no more tall buildings. They are trying but what we really need is the police to get closer to the community."

Mr Carney, 62, who has run the centre for the last 20 years, is the only white face there. "They know what we stand for here," he said. "We have structure and rules. But they are not my rules, they are what the kids have drawn up. They are about respect. The respect we try to teach them is for their parents, who get up early in the morning and work so the kids can have their designer clothes instead of looking up to drug dealers and criminals with flash cars and gold jewellery."

Like the others, he believes nothing has changed. "When Damilola was killed the police were here. Now they are back again. But in between nothing happened. I hope it is going to change but I don't see how."

Damilola's life ended in a grubby stairwell off Blake's Road. It is boarded up now, and the blocks which used to stand on either side have long since been demolished. Broken chairs and old cookers lie abandoned on one of the walkways.

Amid such symbols of despair, one of the

local community leaders does his best to give an upbeat message.

"We as a community cannot say that justice has been done," said the Rev David Martin-Wade, pastor of the Heartbeat International Christian Centre. "There is confusion. There is fear in the community. There is fear that the murderers are still at large. Children may feel unsafe. Parents may feel unsafe.

"But I believe that this community will overcome their initial fear. They will put their trust in community decency and the basic values of life."

Perhaps one day. But today it still feels a long way off.