Yahoo News Masked off-road biker's impeccable timing in Stockton park as Yvette Cooper promises crackdown
"We're talking about off-road biking and things," Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper tells a parkgoer, just as the familiar chug and rev of engines is heard.
"Like that," says one observer as, with impeccable timing, bikes appear in the distance, riders with faces covered. "There's your challenge," notes Joe Dancey, Labour candidate for Stockton West, as the bikers head off down the path at Bishopsgarth Park.
"It's a total nightmare," Ms Cooper tells a bystander waiting for the bikers to make themselves scarce. "We saw one of them just wheelieing up as he went past you."
"That's all you hear," says one park user. "It's constant. They do wheelies on here and churn it all up."
Another says: "They need somewhere they can go on them bikes where no one's going to bother them and they can just get on with it. We used to go in the park all the time, then it got destroyed."
Mr Dancey says he has spoken to people afraid to come into the park or are even moving house because of off-road bikers. Visiting the area, Ms Cooper says if Labour win the general election in less than two weeks' time, they will crack down on the problem.
She says: "A pensioner on a mobility scooter told us she was scared, she was too scared to move and she was frozen there while you had one of those off-road bikers doing wheelies past her. They go really fast on a cycle path, deliberately intimidating people. I think you can't stand for that.
"We think you should do three things. First, you need more neighbourhood police. You do need more police in the community because all of that's been cut back.
"You need more powers to deal with things like the off-road bikes. If that's harassing people and causing problems, you've got to be able to seize and destroy the bikes.
"At the moment there's all sorts of rules, they have to hold them for 14 days and then they can buy them back, and they end up back in the same people's hands and nothing's done. The penalties at the moment are far too low for dangerous off-road biking. We also want to give the police the powers to act really quickly.
"If they've got evidence it's been used for anti-social behaviour and harassment, they should be able to destroy them straight away. We want to make sure there is proper swift action.
"The third thing is, we need youth hubs. You need somewhere for the kids to go." Labour says it will fund more neighbourhood policing by ending "wasteful contracts".
Ms Cooper says this is drawn from the work of the independent Police Foundation, which looked at systems for forces getting everything from uniforms to cars, batons and IT systems. "There's huge amounts of duplication, huge amounts of additional bureaucracy, and also they get a worse deal."
'Respect orders'
She says they estimate they can save up to £400m by changing these systems to put back into frontline policing, funding 13,000 more police officers and PCSOs nationally: "We need to get those police back on the beat."
Labour brought in the anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) when last in government, a flagship measure which later seemed to be discredited, seen as a "badge of honour" by their young recipients. How can the party convince voters they can tackle such behaviour effectively this time around?
Ms Cooper says: "You've got to have a mix of different things. I think the Conservatives watered down the powers on anti-social behaviour. We want to introduce 'respect orders' that have a proper power of arrest. The police can actually enforce them."
What's the difference to Asbos?
"It wouldn't apply to under-18s. We do get a lot of over-18 anti-social behaviour in town centres," she says, adding they want anti-social behaviour coordinators to work with police and councils.
"We see 90% of crimes go unsolved, we're not seeing the police back on the beat, and lots of people you talk to say: 'No one comes and nothing is done.' We want to restore that sense of respect for law and order, restore the support for policing and the criminal justice system."
Local councils, including Stockton's Labour-led authority, often say they do not get enough funding from central government for much-needed public services. So we asked how will Labour solve this, how much more will councils get from a Labour government, and when would they get it?
"We are recognising that money is going to be tight for some time to come," Ms Cooper says. "We've currently got the worst of all worlds, where we've had really weak growth, we've then got record high tax burden and public services just feeling broken. What we have to do is get the economy growing and that's why you've got Rachel Reeves' plans to have a proper new industrial strategy."
That will take time, though. "And we recognise that," replies Ms Cooper, saying they want to give councils longer funding commitments and stronger devolution.
What assurances can she give that, under a Labour government, councils will not end up in the same position next year, having to raise council tax up by 5% again? She answers: "We've got to get the economy growing. We're not going to go back to austerity.
"What we want to do is give councils greater ability to plan, greater flexibility," she adds, saying more police and investment in mental health services will also help, developing partnerships with local services.
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