Red Card scheme 2007
2007
“I attend and help to organise Alcoholics Anonymous and Drug Addiction meetings in the Cathedral. I’ve been involved in Police liaison for drugs, rent boys, prostitution and homeless people, and am still involved. At Snow Hill, there are lots of institutions for homeless people with social needs including gays and lesbians, rent boys, drug users. Now that the law has changed to recognise male prostitution the rent boys, basically young heterosexual males with drug addictions, the police are now using the kerb crawling scenario the same as with (female) prostitutes. A lot of these men are married, with children, so we have introduced red and yellow cards. If they get stopped and caught they get a yellow card, and nothing is done, but if they reoffend and get caught with a red card, then the full force of the law is thrown at them. So that warning system was implemented many years ago at New Street Station where a businessman committed suicide and someone else’s wife or son committed suicide after the outcome of them being caught in a public toilet at New St. We got behind the British Transport Police and the West Midlands Police to introduce a warning system. “
Contributed by: Bill Gavan, 56