"I have seen a machete fight in my street, but because I grew up around here, personally I feel safe. I can imagine if you are coming from somewhere else what it would look like," says Sophie Pendlebury.
She is the shift manager for the day at the One Stop convenience store on Pentwyn Drive, Pentwyn, an estate in the east of Cardiff built as the city expanded in the mid 1970s. Typical of its era, the estate is a warren of dead-end roads lined with semi-detached and some terraced homes. On the outside it is ringed by the busy Pentwyn Road and Glyn Coed Road.
Sophie's words about her home community reflect a wider pride tempered by recognition that all is not right. Councillors describe problems with drugs and anti-social behaviour, children have been beaten up on the way home from school and there is a lack of facilities for younger people. Yet people enjoy living here.
The boarded up door of her convenience store, smashed for the second time this year, shutters partly closed and a discarded lager can on the floor all tell a story. It's a story Sophie has grown up with in Pentwyn, alongside many of the teenagers dubbed "troublemakers" who gather outside the shop on a daily basis
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For this reason it is clear that the manager - a youngster herself - has a rapport with the group, which has earned her respect, perhaps not afforded to others.
While we speak in the shop on a Thursday morning, a group of teenagers enter. It is difficult to imagine them as part of a group known for "terrorising" customers. They are polite, if a little rowdy, but can't be more than 13 or 14 in age.
At the start of the month, two 13-year-old boys were assaulted by a "large group of males" while getting off a bus in neighbouring Llanedeyrn. It prompted local councillor Joe Carter to say that "crime and anti-social behaviour is getting out of control."
It was the latest in a number of high profile incidents in the area in recent years. In May 2021, pupils at Corpus Christi Catholic High School in Pentwyn were put in lockdown after a nearby incident which saw a 17-year-old boy arrested.
A police helicopter circled the area, armed officers were deployed and South Wales Police placed a Section 60 notice on a large proportion of Pentwyn and Llanedeyrn, giving them powers to stop and search anyone in the vicinity. Both the police and a local councillor have now confirmed the incident involved a machete.
A month later, there was a large police presence and cordon in place at a property in Pentwyn which police confirmed was linked to a murder investigation in Newport.
Five people - three from Cardiff, albeit not Penwtyn, and two of no fixed abode - have pleaded not guilty to murder, manslaughter, and robbery of a Gucci bag in a trial at Cardiff Crown Court. Updates on that case can be found here.
Eight months earlier, there was also a large police presence in the area after a man was hospitalised after a reported stabbing in Pant Glas, Pentwyn on Tuesday October 20.
But while these serious incidents shocked the community, it is the day-to-day crime and antisocial behaviour which blights the area.
According to data from Police.uk, there were 117 recorded crimes in December 2020, this rose marginally to 121 in December 2021. A year apart, the top three reported crimes in Pwntwyn were violence and sexual offences, anti-social behaviour and criminal damage.
The boarded up windows of the One Stop are a sorry sight, but a clear indication of the anti-social behaviour and criminal damage which are becoming an increasing part of day-to-day life in the suburb.
At the One Stop alone, staff say they see around five shoplifting incidents a day and that the entrance is constantly "trashed".
Sophie says that the teenagers who seem to have garnered a reputation for causing trouble in the area have found themselves in this position as there is nothing else for them to do in the area.
"I think for us here it’s mainly the younger kids, because there’s not many things for them around here they hang around the shop.
"And because they’re bored they start chucking stones at cars, start terrorising customers, it’s minor incidents.
"It’s a lot worse. Before they used to have the skate park down in Pentwyn but now they have nothing to do so they hang around here.
"They used to be down there out of everybody’s way. Since they’ve started taking things like that away it’s gotten much worse around here.
"All they are able to do now is hang around here, or hang around in the bus stop. And then they get bored and smash up the bus stop.
"I feel like if they had somewhere to go, and they tell me this, this wouldn’t happen."
She said that most of the group are teenagers, aged between 13 and 16, but some are older.
Many communities around the country have seen funding cuts for youth services in the past few years, resulting in youth clubs being shuttered in increasing numbers.
Research released by YMCA, an organisation which helps support homeless services and services for young people around Wales and the UK, uncovered earlier this year a 70% real-terms decline in funding across England and Wales since 2010.
It said funding for youth services in Wales had fallen from £50 million in 2010/11 to just £31 million in 2018/19 - a real terms decline of 38%.
Sophie said that while the large group looks intimidating, it is a shame that they all are tarred with the same brush as many are "really nice kids."
"We have had a few complaints about people who are scared or nervous about coming in. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are nice and don’t want to make anyone feel like that, but because there is such a big group of them it does deter people coming in.
"A lot of them are really nice kids. Sometimes people will mistake their play fighting and messing around for real fighting, but because they are such a big group it does get rowdy.
"I can understand for older people how it can be quite frightening. People don’t see their true intentions. The majority of them are really good kids but they get the bad name for a small minority of them."
For Sophie, one of her main concerns is that some of the youngsters in the group will find themselves involved in more serious crime - knife crime in particular.
"If you’re in the group then it’s not very safe. Knife crime is on the rise around Pentwyn, I would say that is probably people’s biggest concern. I have seen a machete fight in my street.
"I personally feel safe around here because I grew up around here, but I can imagine if you are coming from somewhere else what it would look like."
Douglas Mckenzie, 71, known as 'inch', agrees that most of the youths are harmless.
When we chat to Douglas it is his birthday and he is off to place a bet at Betfred, next door to the One Stop before visiting his grandchildren.
Having lived in the area all his life, he is not fazed by the supposed 'trouble'.
"I don’t think it’s a big problem around here," he said "There’s a few instances but not a lot.
"They hang around by the shop but the police keep moving them, I don’t know why - they’re just talking.
"Truthfully I think that causes more of a problem. They’re not doing anything wrong, just a bit rowdy - like we were when we were kids."
On the other side of Pentwyn, connecting it to neighbouring Llanedeyrn is Glyn Coed Road. The local police station which covers the entire area is based out of the Powerhouse community hub in Llanedeyrn.
Mum-of-four Cara lives on Glyn Coed Road, and said that she sees police vehicles racing up and down the street "a few times a day."
However, she said that this is far less than was the case last year where at one point there was "a police helicopter up every night for a while" and the blue lights of police vehicles were commonplace.
"Last year there were helicopters and police driving up and down with their lights on a few times a day- mainly in the summer and until September and October but that has died down now.
"To me it all seems to have calmed down a lot."
While Cara, who has lived in Pentwyn for 15 years says "it is a really nice community", she does worry when she hears some of the serious incidents involving knives that were reported, primarily last year.
"It's close to home isn’t it.
"It’s scary for me because I’ve got a 17, 18 and 13 year old and when they are out, you do wonder if they are going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"But you can’t worry like that because that happens everywhere, But in general, it is a really nice community - I like living here, I would never move from here."
Cara said that she doesn't feel unsafe walking around the area at night, something several people and councillors have said is happening due to the rise in crime and antisocial behaviour.
"I walk at 11 o'clock at night that doesn’t bother me, but that’s just me you know.
"The next person might think ‘oh no I can’t do that’. I do look at situations and you know if I see a big group I think ‘oh I’ll go the other way around’ but yeah I do feel safe.
"I think it’s a really nice community, people look out for each other. I feel safe around here.
But if you do see something wrong or going on, I don’t think people are scared to say either, people will say ‘what are you doing’ or confront them."
Cara says her husband grew up in Llanedeyrn, and says that the lack of youth provision in the area is what is driving the rise in antisocial behaviour.
"I think the biggest problem is there is no youth clubs. In the summer you do see big groups of teenagers but I just think ok they’re having a drink but they’re quiet, they’re doing no harm - it’s because they have nowhere to go.
"It’s sad really, because we always had something to do."
Youth provision in the city generally was discussed at a full Cardiff council meeting on Thursday January 27, the same day we spoke to Pentwyn residents about how anti-social behaviour in the area, mainly among youths, was having an effect.
In the meeting, several Penwtyn and Llanedeyrn councillors- including Cllr Joe Carter - highlighted the need for increased youth services across the city.
As part of the debate he highlighted the importance of this service, particularly in deprived areas, and what he says is the risk of young people being led into crime due to lack of services.
In the meeting, Cllr Joe Carter addressed the council and said: "I can't speak for other parts of the city and what the geography is in that area and what centres they may or may not have been closed, but I do not have to go very far to look around my community and see the chaos caused by not having services for our young people.
"The crime those young people have been swept up alongside, the drugs, the gangs preying on young children and bringing them into this environment because they haven't got the traditional youth service and support they used to have.
"We need to be really honest with ourselves that if we're going to really prevent crime, if we're going to save a generation of young people, we need to invest in youth provision."
According to the 2019 Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, two out of the ten areas of Pentwyn are among the top 10% overall most deprived areas of Wales, with large chunk of Llanedeyrn falling within that. Three out of the ten areas are in the top 10% most deprived areas of Wales with respect to income.
Cllr Carter has been a councillor since 2004. He says that in the last eight or nine years there has been a "significant increase" in antisocial behaviour in the area.
He said: "Last year was particularly a challenging one with the number of knife crime incidents, there were a number of machete based incidents.
"And the root cause of all of these issues sadly is drugs, and drug gangs related to that. And I think that is the main thing that has changed, and the severity of that has changed.
"We have sadly always had low-level anti-social behaviour, and that is a recurring trend of our meetings with the police, but sadly that has increased over the years.
"The numbers of people spotted taking or dealing drugs has worsened, in subways and underpassses. This has left people feeling unsafe walking after dark around the community.
"Even things as simple as walking a dog around Pentwyn Lake, people don’t feel safe doing that after dark now because of issues we’ve had of gangs of people hiding themselves in the woods nearby. And that’s really challenging for the community."
He said that the recent incident involving two 13-year-olds assaulted at the start of the year "scared the community".
At the time, Cllr Carter shared a police appeal about the incident adding that "crime and anti-social behaviour is getting out of control and we must all stand up to it."
"That was a really worrying case for us. To have children of this community who couldn’t walk home after taking a bus, that’s completely unheard of," he said.
"We rely on and want our children to be as independent as possible and be able to do walks at night without fear of being beaten up. In that sense, we certainly didn’t have issues like this happening when I first got elected.
"There is a sense of shock and anger when these things happen, but there is also a theme with residents where they say ‘well we’re not surprised that this is happening because xyz is happening’.
"I think drugs are a big thing here. The sad reality for the police is that it is a lucrative market for drug dealers which drives the fighting and bigger issues here.
"You see disenfranchised local teenagers or gangs are being sucked into these much bigger Cardiff and outside of Cardiff gangs."
While the data from police.uk does put Pentwyn at the higher end of the scale for areas with the number of reported crimes across the city, it is not dissimilar to other areas.
"I think Pentwyn is not unique in the sort of crime demographic we see here, it would not surprise me if we see similar patterns in places like Llanrymneu, fairwater, ely - I don’t think we are unique in that regard. And I have seen the stats, and the drug problems in some areas such as the city centre massively dwarf what we have here.
"I think the challenge for us is that it’s a suburban area with lots of families and we are sort of getting to that point where local kids are being dragged into it. We also have huge problems too in people not reporting the crime. That is a challenge we all face. We are perpetually warning people to give this intelligence to the police. So I thin the stats across Wales are skewed because of that.
"It makes all of our lives harder, because unless we get that intelligence, it makes it very difficult to control. That is a message we push is to work with the police."
One person in Penwtyn who is determined to turn the reputation of the community - and her pub around - is landlady Kay Woodward, who runs the Hollybush pub on Glyn Coed Road.
Since taking over the pub last September, she says she and her deputy manager Jamie Pike have been working hard to provide Pentwyn with a local pub free of trouble.
She says that due to the no tolerance approach she has to any conflict, she has garnered the respect of the locals and the "troubled kids" of the area.
"It is a mess down here that needs sorting out but I am lucky that I have all of my regulars behind me, supporting me," said Kay.
"There is a lot of drug use in the area, but it is everywhere isn’t it. I’m working with police about the drug issue, obviously not within the pub.
"All the kids are troubled, lockdown has had a very big impact in the community and they all just turn to drugs.
"There are a couple of troubled kids around here, but they all respect you. I am making the problems here better, if you build that relationship with people they will respect you."
Kay says that since taking over the pub she has been punched in the face, had bricks thrown at her, and she has now purchased body cams to protect her staff. She says she does not have door staff as believes these can sometimes antagonise a situation.
"I’ve succeeded in a lot of ways, but there is obviously a lot of work to do.
"We have all types of people here. Solicitors, ex army, youngsters - when there was a fight last weekend outside they all stood up and said 'Kay we can see that you are fighting for our local and we are going to fight for it with you', they are all behind me.
"All I get shown is respect and politeness now after speaking to them [people causing trouble at the pub]. I know there are problems here, I speak to the police on a regular basis. I love this pub with my heart and soul, I am not going anywhere."
Speaking to WalesOnline, local policing inspector Scott Threadgold explained the current issues affecting Pentwyn and Llanedeyrn from a policing perspective.
He said crime statistics are up on last year - something he said was to be expected due to the coronavirus restrictions placed upon the country in 2021 - but are down on the pre Covid levels of 2019 and 2020.
"From a policing perspective, it’s a really challenging area to police. We’re all under a lot of pressure in terms of trying to combat different demands compared to last year. Covid restrictions were in place for most of 2021 which meant crime fell across the board.
"But our general demand across the Llanishen and the Llanedeyrn areas roughly, we average out about 18 recorded crimes a day, which isn't a high number compared to other areas of demand and priority.
"If you look at our crime numbers and antisocial behaviour recorded crime figures, they are on the increase from last year - which can be expected based upon the Covid restrictions that were in place.
"But if you look at the crime recording figures from 2020, and 2019, we are significantly below those. We are about 500 to 600 recorded crimes less than where it was years pre Covid, which is obviously really positive."
He said that in the Pentwyn and Llanedeyrn area, criminal damage is down year on year, and the biggest issues the force are facing in the local vicinity are vehicle crimes and the rise of stalking and harassment into violence against women and girls - the majority of which he said is domestic violence. Inspector Threadgold said there can be up to 16 vehicle crimes reported in a night.
"So at least once every month, we're conducting large scale 'operation perception', this is our policing response to targeting specific areas to understand people's concerns and engaging with them. There are specific survey questions which then get fed back and we need to determine the appropriate responses.
"So at the minute we're targeting about 800 houses a month.
"We’ve introduced In the Neighbourhood Policing Team speaking with every victim, so every victim that reports a crime in this particular sector gets a personal phone call from the Neighbourhood Policing Team, generally an NSO or a Beat manager, where their contact details are passed on and then it gives them that follow up."
"We've introduced a kind of vehicle crime strategy. So across the force, we've got various policies that the way we deal with certain types of crime. So from the first of October, we investigate all vehicle crime offences within the Neighbourhood Policing Team. So they've all got a neighboir, a beat manager assigned, they all have an investigative action plan set, and they're all victims who get seen by members of the team to collect all the evidence."
In discussing some of the serious crimes which have blighted the area in recent years, Inspector Threadgold said these were isolated incidents.
"Obviously, we had an increase in knife crime at the start of last year, where a large-scale operation was done over the summer period where various key nominals were placed in prison. We're at about 43% reduction across this sector of knife crime compared to the same period last year and prior to Covid.
"I think we've seen a move away from the knife crime element into what I would refer to as core crime, your vehicle crime stuff that's really affecting people. But that kind of stuff is manageable, at a local level, we've asked if we know who's doing it, and just making sure we've got those contacts.
"It's very isolated, at the start of 2021 we clearly had a drug issue, we clearly had a number of key individuals involved in drugs that were linked to weapons which caused the whole load of concern and raised up the kind of thought process last year.
"Since the summer since the large-scale operation was conducted, we've seen a significant fall in knife crime, and where knife crime does occur, it's virtually always isolated.
"Drugs related crime is a very broad term but in terms of drugs possession and drug supply were about 43% reduction compared to last year and the year prior to Covid.
"So a significant decrease in those offences being reported to us or being found by police.
"I think there is always that perception for the public, that crime in general is linked to drug supply. I think that's very hard to quantify, very hard to focus on. But what I would say is when you've got those covert operations in place, they're both done at the weekend targeting high crime areas around violence, and those in the week targeting high crime areas around vehicle crime, or stalking searches are being conducted for for people in possession of drugs that allows us to record some of that information down and monitor where that is. What I would say is that there's no kind of information at our level to suggest that there is a real key issue that's different to anywhere else."
In many ways, Pentwyn is not dissimilar to other areas of Cardiff. Like many others it is suffering the brunt of youth cuts, which in turn, have worked to drive up antisocial behaviour in the area.
Simply, because as Sophie Pendlebury put it, young people "have nothing else to do other than throw stones at cars."
While it might be one of the most deprived areas of the city, blighted by "out of control" crime and anti-social behaviour, it is determined to fight against its reputation.
And fight against the systemic problems which for the most part are out of the residents control.
As Cllr Carter said: "We are a community who do look out for each other. We as a community have to fight back through those fears.
"The minority number of people who try to bring the community down has always been there and has worsened but we need to focus on the positives and fight back that fear."
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