Stolen phone leads councillor to drug den

A senior councillor and businessman says he was surrounded by “about 20 thugs” at his ward’s “main drug den” while trying to track down a stolen mobile phone.

Harlescott councillor and deputy cabinet member Jeff Anderson said a member of one of his gyms lost the device, so he tracked to a house and “a bit naively” knocked on the door.

He said hostile adults and children surrounded his car as he tried to leave, and said it took police 50 minutes to arrive.

Cllr Anderson was speaking as the West Mercia Police and Crime Panel discussed Pippa Mills’s nomination as the new chief constable. She is currently the deputy chief of Essex Police. She said it was “absolutely unacceptable” there should be “no-go streets”, and promised to tackle them.

Conservative Cllr Anderson, who was elected in May, said his ward was “probably one of the least safe within West Mercia”, and the drugs trade was dragging it down.

“It’s one of the reasons why I stood; I want to try and improve things,” he said.

“During my election process I didn’t actually feel safe going door-to-door in certain streets. I had to abandon some of my door-knocking because I was surrounded by gangs of kids linked to the drug lords in the area.

“It’s something that’s got worse over the last 20 years and there’s no-go streets, literally. The police, I sense, have pulled out.

“I run a health club chain and one my members had his phone stolen and, foolishly, perhaps, we tracked it. I hammered on the door and it turned out to be the main drugs den within Harlescott.

“I’m a former boxer so I’m maybe a little bit over-confident in my own abilities, but when I was surrounded by about 20 thugs I thought it was time to retreat.

“I had kids and adults surrounding my car and I thought ‘crikey, I’m in trouble here’.

“Fifty minutes later the police arrived, fully tooled up. I was told I was a rather silly individual to have confronted this particular house.”

Dep Chf Con Mills said assistance like Safer Streets funding was helping some areas but would not be available to all, and said she wanted to bolster the force’s existing “local policing community charter” across the board.

“In terms of a half-mile area that is a no-go zone, that is absolutely not acceptable,” she said.

“We’ll make a commitment that that sense shouldn’t be in any neighbourhood across the force area.”

Cllr Anderson said he hoped the problem would be sorted within his four-year term, and said he receives “constant” calls from council and housing association tenants hoping to transfer out of the ward.

“Harlescott is a very unusual ward and it was a ward that took me a lot of courage to fight,” he said.
“I was originally offered the town centre in Shrewsbury which would have been a lot easier. But I decided to have a go at this because I wanted to make a difference. But I will need police support to achieve that.”

Following her nomination by Police and Crime Commissioner John Campion and confirmation by the panel, Dep Chf Con Mills will take up her new position in September, when incumbent Chief Constable Anthony Bangham retires.

Cllr Anderson lists “Anderson Health Ltd” and “Bodytech Health Club” on his Shropshire Council register of interests. Companies House records show he is a director of both.