Summer bother condemned? at meeting

ANTI-SOCIAL behaviour was a hot topic at the monthly meeting of Moffat and District Community Council on Tuesday.

One resident reported seeing young people at the Station Park on multiple occasions drinking at the pavilion and smashing the empty bottles and described the behaviour as ‘completely unacceptable’. There were also reports that some of the broken glass was being buried in the park’s sand pit.

Moffat’s community officer PC Lee Barnfather stated that he and his fellow officers were aware of the situation, commenting: “It is unacceptable and we have been made aware of that.

“PC Alderwood has carried out patrols in the area, but I’m not going to lie to you - they might not be there when we are there.

“The community safety team are also here to deal with anti-social behaviour and we can pass this on and have joint patrols in the future.”

However, Moffat Academy’s headteacher Tara Woods stepped in to defend the town’s young people, saying: “When I hear the generalisation ‘it’s the youth’ I’m always going to defend them because we do have a lot of people visiting Moffat and tourists. And from what I’ve heard from our youth engagement officer is that since the pump track has been opened that children and young people have been very grateful for that facility and that the summer has been relatively quiet in the area and certainly we’ve had very few, if not any, incident reported to us.

“When issues do arise it will be a handful and people will know who they are and anything that is reported to us we will report to PC Davie Irons and he always follows up and investigates.

“We’re a 2-18 campus so the children using the play equipment tend to be the siblings, younger cousins and relatives of the older children so they wouldn’t want to harm them.”