A NEW extra-strong strain of the drug known as ‘spice’ is behind the growing reports of people being collapsed in zombie-like states in the town centre, the head of the council’s safer neighbourhood service believes.
One spice user was recently admitted to hospital SIX times in one day according to Paul Brannan, head of the safer communities service at Barnsley Council, who is based at Barnsley Police Station and works closely with the town centre police team.
For months people have been posting pictures online of people collapsed in town - including the one above showing three collapsed individuals which has been shared 600 times after being posted on the Barnsley Community Facebook page and the problem seems to have got worse in recent weeks.
But Paul says despite the horrifying scenes of people laid out in the streets, overall the number of trouble causers in the town centre, and the overall number of incidents, are both falling, and that now just a small hardcore of about a dozen people are responsible for most of the highly visible and damaging picture being painted of the town centre on social media.
“By and large, it is the same dozen-or-so people, and it seems to be associated with people taking spice,” he said.
Spice used to be referred to as a legal high, but is now a class B substance. It is a synthetic cannabinoid designed to mimic the effects of cannabis.
“It’s way stronger than cannabis. It can vary in strength and I think what we’ve been seeing in these last few weeks is a much stronger batch. It’s been very different,” said Paul.
“If you’ve got one user going to hospital six times in one day, and maybe 100 people have seen that happen each time, you can see what the impact of that is in terms of perception.”
Paul said significant progress had been made over the last couple of years. In 2016 there were about 100 regular trouble causers blighting the town centre regularly.
Targeted action by the town centre police team and use of the public space protection order, giving powers to disperse trouble causers, helped drive that figure down to about a dozen persistent hard-core trouble makers, he said.
“It’s about a dozen people, and it’s presenting differently to what it was 18 months ago.
“It used to be really lairy behaviour, shouting abuse, highly intoxicated carrying on.
“But now it’s very different. This zombie-like state people are seeing, people being laid out in the town, that’s spice, that’s what it does.
“In reality the threat these people pose in this state is very little, the risk to other people is small, the risk and the vulnerability is to the people taking it.
“But that is not to minimise the impact this has on other people in the town centre. When you see people laid out in this state, it’s horrible to see and it causes a good deal of alarm and distress.
“But it does limit what action we can take.”
Paul said the approach has been to track the people consistently causing trouble and to gather evidence on the other elements of antisocial behaviour to build a case for civil injunctions, which restrict where people can go, ban them from associating with certain people, and can require them to take some sort of therapy to try and tackle the reasons behind their drug use and behaviour.
In the last 12 months almost 30 have been issued.
“There was one particular photograph that went round on social media of three individuals laid out in a line.
“Of those three people, one has now been recalled to prison and we have applications in place for civil injunctions on the other two.
“Of the dozen hard-core individuals we’re talking about, six are now on injunctions, we have one back in prison, and three or four we are building an evidence case for injunctions. One has already ended up in prison for a breach, with two or three awaiting court for breaches.
“But it all takes time, we have to prove that the injunctions are proportional, necessary and reasonable.
“We have to do that because these orders are quite Draconian.
“They do limit people’s freedom of movement, and freedom of association.
“The council and the police are absolutely adamant that we will do everything we possibly can to minimise this.
“People will use this situation, whether it be for political reasons or whatever, to do our town centre down and we do not want that.
“The town doesn’t deserve it, we are trying so hard to make it an attractive place to visit and shop.
“Barnsley is safer than any of the other town centres in South Yorkshire if you look at the figures.
“While the perception might not be good, if you look at the figures, incidents of antisocial behaviour in the town centre are down 45 per cent in the last quarter of the last financial year compared to the same quarter a year earlier.”
In a column for the Chronicle this week, Barnsley Central MP Dan Jarvis voices his frustration at the situation in the town centre.
He says the recent Tour de Yorkshire demonstrated just how much Barnsley has to offer but that the day-to-day reality for many residents is that visiting the town centre can be an ‘unpleasant experience’. See page 8 of this week’s issue for the full column.
