The Police Forum
1997
"I then got very interested in the Police Liaison Group, depending on what shift was operating the level of support, or level of contempt we would have. The whole idea was to try to get rid of street crime, get us some street cred. A particular police officer took a year out and was funded to become the Police Community Officer, and he eventually retired, and funding was not continued the following year. He embarrassed the Police into getting involved. We registered the Police Liaison Group meeting with Birmingham City Council, which then meant they (the police) were obliged to turn up on a monthly basis. We eventually got the Inspector of the area to attend on a regular basis, and we then got crime figures from quarterly down to monthly, broken down along Hurst St, all numbered, so we knew exactly where the attacks were taking place, and that’s still in place today. A lot of the practices that were brought into the gay village are now citywide under banners like ‘Pub watch’ and ‘Club watch’. These are all offshoots of things that BCC and the West Midlands Police invited me to join and set up. I assumed that the heterosexual community of Broad St or the rest of the town were totally organised, but they weren’t they were in more disarray than we ever could imagine! So I helped to form those things over the last decade all over the city and bring Police Liaison into every aspect of the community, Asian, Afro-Caribbean, white, heterosexual, that has been good for the gay community and me. We’ve come a long way and made the path smoother, but there is still a long, long way to go."
Contributed by: Bill Gavan, 56