Back in 2002, Reverend Dr Dawnecia Palmer AFP OBA was on a plane coming back from France when she saw a headline on a newspaper saying Bristol was the worst city in Europe for drugs and gun crime.
Crime at that time was at an all-time high in St Paul's, she said, adding that it then started to move to different areas but, back then, that was the main area. "It was a supermarket for drugs," she said. "At the time, it was horrible. I thought 'I am part of a city that has crime and what are our churches doing?'
"I made it my job to go down down there and it felt 'this isn't real'. There was a guy at every corner selling drugs openly.
