How residents forced out dealers

One project in Hackney proves communities can force drug dealers from their streets.

Two years ago, Clarence Mews was an addicts' haven where a price list fixed to a crumbling wall displayed the cost of deals, and drugs were sold day and night.

On one side, the Hackney street backed on to the rear gardens of grand Georgian houses on Clapton Square, on the other it faced the tough Pembury Estate. Obscured from view and often inaccessible to patrol cars, it had become known as a "rat-run" for addicts. Police lacked the resources to tackle it.

But a concerted effort by locals, supported by a £980,000 Home Office grant to fund extra police patrols, turned the street around.

Stockbroker Mike Moriaty, 59, said: "People were arriving at all hours of the day to buy drugs. If you walked through there you felt threatened. And if you tried to ask them to leave, you were threatened."

Another resident said: "The dealers used to sit out openly on crates in the street. The road would get blocked up with cars, and if I asked them to move they would threaten to kill me."

Residents lobbied the police, the local MP and the Health and Safety Executive and won a grant under the Clapton Communities Against Drugs scheme.