As 2022 began the sight of groups of youths in dark clothing with their faces covered plagued Huyton Village.
Business owners saw their shop windows smashed and after the financial misery of the pandemic, some feared unruly groups of young people were keeping footfall low. In the words of a senior police officer, the end of 2021 had seen reports of anti-social behaviour in Huyton Village reach "crisis point". Things had to be done differently, and there were no quick fixes.
Turgut Olgun, owner of the El Pueblo tapas, Solasta steak house and Eton Place restaurants on Derby Road, described the issues facing business owners in the area at the beginning of this year. He said: "It was a big issue, the children gathering around here, at some stages it was a big problem.
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"Luckily my business didn't really get targeted but sometimes with other shops who didn't know how to handle the kids, it got out of hand. You have to be careful, if they target you, you can't fight them because they are children.
"It got really bad for a few months, it was a very stressful time. Some of the shops they would throw things in and smash the windows and run away, that kind of thing.
"You would look outside and there would be 20 or 30 of them with balaclavas. I don't know if it was the reason, but it was a lot quieter round then, it could have been that people didn't feel safe coming to the shops at night."
Julia Fetachou, whose family run the Floga Greek restaurant on Derby Road, said they had only just opened around February this year when problems arose.
She said: "When we first opened in around February, they came the kids, they came and smashed the windows at the front of our shop. But it has not been so bad recently, it got better when we talked to them.
"The police came and talked to us and things have been better in the last two or three months."
But both Mr Olgun and Ms Fetachou both agree on is that in recent months there have been noticeably less problems with the local youths.
Mr Olgun said: "There is a lot of negative news about Huyton, but things are getting better in the last few months. It is great to have something good to hear."
That problem, of course, has not disappeared on its own. The pleas of local businesses and residents became a incessant demand for action.
Superintendent Karl Baldwin, of Knowsley's Local Policing Team, told the ECHO that the force sat down with Knowsley Council and decided to "treat the cause rather than the symptoms".
He said: "In truth it was a really difficult period, because when we get large groups of young people who may only, and I say 'only' in air quotes, be causing nuisance behaviour, relatively low level criminality, the reality is that behaviour has significant well-being, financial, and confidence impacts on the community.
"It's the number one thing in Knowsley the elected councillors and the community tell me, as the local policing team, that they care about the most. It affects them, a quality of life issue, how safe do I feel in my community. So the response that we have implemented and has ultimately proven to be very, very successful."
Francine McKeown, service manager for crime and community safety at Knowsley Council, explained at an event to launch Merseyside Police's new Prevention strategy this week how the approach worked.
She said: "We had problems in Huyton Village, people were exasperated, and it was leading to more serious criminality. So we got together, we had a meeting, and during the meeting we decided that we would adopt a co-ordinated approach.
"So Merseyside Police decided they would increase deployment in the town centre of both uniformed and non-uniformed officers, we enlisted the support of Merseyside Fire & Rescue and their Street Intervention Team, which were deployed during weekends, helping to engage with young people and signpost activities taking place in the area, and we worked with our CCTV team to identify those young people that were involved in anti-social behaviour in real-time.
"And how we did that was we worked with all of the business owners, we provided them with a WhatsApp group and asked them to WhatsApp the group when they saw young people [conducting anti-social behaviour], we then enlisted our CCTV colleagues to identify those young people, our police colleagues were then on the scene and were able to apprehend them."
As a result of that approach, police said a number of youths were "referred to the appropriate agencies for action and support", eight Acceptable Behaviour Agreements were issued, four Disposal Orders were issued, and a 14-year-old boy was arrested for assault and criminal damage.
However, Ms McKeown said arresting or detaining the youths involved was only one small part of the strategy. She said: "What we then did was we liaised with their parents. We identified whether they had siblings and whether they were involved in early help services, if there were early help services that were available that could support them, we would refer them to the appropriate services.
"As a result of that we are reassured that we have prevented possibly their siblings becoming involved in future behaviour."
The strategy has resulted in a huge reduction in reported incidents. Since the end of 2021 according to Merseyside Police, reports of criminal damage or anti-social behaviour in Huyton Village have dropped by 50%
And as of November 2022, there has been no further incidents reported.
The benefit of intervening in what could be considered relatively low level "nuisance" behaviour does not just fall on local residents, however.
As Supt. Baldwin highlighted: "What we tend to find is people who come to police attention when they are young inevitably are on the cusp of making decisions that may ingrain a criminal lifestyle for the future.
"So if we can intervene and prevent them and their behaviour escalating, we may be able to switch them to the right path so that they can lead more productive and healthy lives in the future."
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