“Are the police liaising with the Housing Executive at all? What we need is for these elements to be driven out of the district.”
The Burrendale resident also said she believed “trouble makers” were relocated from the nearby Dunwellan Park estate into her neighbourhood.
“We need the Housing Executive to understand we don’t want or need these people in our area,” she told the meeting.
“Our estate is being used as a dumping ground, it’s as simple as that, and it is far from fair on the many good people who live there and have lived there for generations,” she concluded.
Her comments were supported by another Newcastle family who appealed for the PSNI to give them some help to thwart those involved in anti-social behaviour around their home.
The father told the meeting that his family and their home were being hounded by troublemakers.
“We need help and we need it quickly,” he told those attending the meeting.
“The police have come out to us, but we need more help than that. What we are going through is far from fair.
He added: “A few bad pennies are making our lives a misery and we have done nothing wrong.”
Newcastle-based Assembly member Willie Clarke suggested that a community safety action plan could be established in a bid to improve conditions for some residents.
Confirming that residents in a number of built-up areas of Newcastle were “tortured on a regular basis,” the Sinn Fein representative told the meeting he was frequently contacted by constituents whose lives, he explained, “are an absolute misery.”
“This anti-social behaviour is making people’s lives sheer hell and the various agencies cannot bury their heads in the sand any longer. We need to work in a collective manner, diversifying and coming up with activities for young people.”
The Assembly member and local Councillor continued: “The vast majority of residents in the Burrendale are decent, honest, hard-working people and yet half a dozen individuals are getting away with making their lives hell.
“There have been multiple stabbings and lesser problems, which may seem very, very small to the police but they are of massive importance and concern to the people being affected.”
Paying tribute to the residents who had addressed the meeting, Mr Clarke said he was aware that a number of people had been evicted from Dunwellan Park, for causing anti-social behaviour problems, and that they had been “relocated just across the road into the Burrendale.”
He added: “We need to make an urgent and a real focus on eradicating these problems once and for all.”
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