Residents in Leeds’ ‘least trusting’ area have opened up about the horrors they see in their neighbourhood on a regular basis.
Locals spoke to LeedsLive about tragically seeing their own friends murdered in broad daylight. One resident recounted the horrific moment they saw a man running and collapsing in the street with a bullet in his back in Lincoln Green in Burmantofts.
They’ve said crime is a regular occurrence in the small Leeds neighbourhood near St James’s Hospital. This comes after the area polled as Leeds’ ‘least trusting area’, in a national survey conducted by Onward Good Neighbours.
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The poll surveyed more than 42,000 adults across England. In Lincoln Green and St James, approximately 61.3% adults said they felt cautious in the area.
Lincoln Green pensioner Joe Clinnon, 66, likes to sit outside the off-licence in Lincoln Green Shopping Centre as he has “nothing better to do”. The shopping centre consists of a concrete courtyard with a selection of shops and a pharmacy.
Joe says he’s seen some horrors from his perch outside the shop. With him is his nephew Patrick Chapman, 46, who says his Uncle Joe is a “very popular” man in the area and everyone says "hello" to him as they’re going into the shop.
Patrick said: “There’s bank cards stolen, and you couldn’t put your bike here without two or three people looking them over. I’ve just seen a guy who was about to smash a van window to take a mobile phone out.
“I’ve seen my friend get stabbed here. It was awful, it’s just really awful. It’s hard to erase these things out of your mind, these things stick with you. When you see things regularly like that, it just becomes normality. My friend got shot outside the probation office at 3.30am.”
Joe said: “It’s a s*** hole. Someone should get a Spitfire and take it all down. People will rob you around here. I’ve seen a man getting killed up here. I saw him run up the road with a bullet in him and he collapsed dead.”
Patrick thinks the Government should do more to help the area. They pointed to pharmacist Furkan Al-Biatty, 30, as a pillar of the community who helps people whenever possible.
'Deprived area'
Pharmacist manager Furkan, of Well Pharamacy in Lincoln Green Shopping Centre, has said he’s built up a level of “trust” in the embattled area in the four years he’s worked there and people no longer steal from his store.
Furkan said: “I get it. It’s such a deprived area. From an outside perspective, people may look at it and think they can’t walk through the streets. There is crime. I’ll happily walk through this area and feel safe.
“Anywhere if you walk through Leeds, not just Lincoln Green, if I had a wife or kid, I wouldn’t let them wander the streets at night. No one would.
“In terms of daylight it’s normal. You get the odd crazy guy shouting at themselves and all that – but they’re just angry at themselves. Overall, I don’t think it’s too bad.”
The Onward Good Neighbours survey, carried out by FocalData asked 42,696 adults across England how much they trust other people, using a standard question from the British Social Attitudes survey: “Generally speaking, would you say that people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”
Respondents were asked to say whether they think that people can almost always or usually be trusted or that you usually or almost always can't be too careful in dealing with people. To come up with the results, organisation then factored in individual and area characteristics, including: overcrowded housing, ethnicity, health, qualification levels, housing tenure, social grade, age and gender.
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