DERRY: STILL A CITY UNDER SIEGE

DERRY'S reputation as a city of welcome has been scarred by an upsurge in city centre violence.

Recent attacks have resulted in two men being critically injured and a 20-year-old woman raped.

The assaults, almost all of them drink-related, are threatening to drive people from city centre streets at night time, making the area a virtual no-go zone.

Anxious parents wait up into the early hours of the morning, especially at weekends, worrying until their sons and daughters come home.

Taxi drivers are refusing to work on Friday and Saturday nights because of the increased fear factor. And nursing and medical staff in the city's Altnagelvin Hospital have witnessed violence in the accident and emergency department as thugs try to settle scores following street clashes.

On one occasion, a seriously-ill patient was attacked in the ward while receiving life-saving treatment and now special security measures are being implemented in the accident and emergency waiting and treatment rooms.

Police in Derry are struggling to keep up with the numbers of often vicious city centre attacks.

Up until the end of May this year, police in the Foyle District had responded to over 10,000 calls for assistance, many of them violence related.

Much of the violence starts as drunken youths pour out of the pubs and attempt to get into taxis.

"We have had examples of people in taxis being pulled out of the vehicle by others looking to force their way into the same taxi and then the fights start," said Eamon O'Donnell of the North-West Taxi Proprietors Association.

"In the current climate of city centre violence, the job of the taxi driver has become more dangerous, too dangerous for many of our drivers.

"There is a hostile atmosphere, particularly at weekends and because of that atmosphere offices in the city centre have to close their doors to protect the dispatcher.

"A lot of attacks happen in areas where there is inadequate street lighting," Mr O'Donnell said.

In those areas, he added, the drivers run the risk of both personal injury and damage to their cars.

"People are becoming more abusive to the drivers.

"There is one particular taxi firm with 40 drivers available at night but at weekends only 10 drivers are willing to work.

"We need better street lights, we need the pedestrian zones opened to taxis because the presence of taxis in the areas where many of the attacks take place will make people feel that bit safer.

"There's also a strong case to be made for better co-operation between publicans, door staff and regulated taxi drivers because at the moment sections of the city centre are in danger of becoming no- go areas and that's when the violence occurs," he said.

Altnagelvin Hospital's accident and emergency consultant James Steele said city centre violence was a big problem for staff.

"It has been [a problem] for a number of years now. On average we would treat three assault victims per night and that goes up to an average of six per week-end night," he said.

"At times, we've had 10 assault victims needing treatment on a single weekend night.

"Some of these assaults have been very serious, including people with serious head injuries who have been beaten unconscious and who have sustained life-threatening head injuries.

"Whenever there is that sort of aggression going on associated with drink we have had the violence spilling over into the accident and emergency waiting room and treatment area.

"A very high proportion of the attacks are drink-related and we have treated a significant number of very young people," Mr Steele said.

The hours between one and 3am are the most dangerous for the public, police and ambulance crews on the streets of Derry.

At that time, especially at weekends, more than a dozen pubs, within a square mile radius, disgorge thousands of drunken customers onto a few narrow city centre streets.

The surrounding taxi ranks and fast food outlets become magnets to violent gangs on the prowl for easy victims and front line emergency services are increasingly having to run the gauntlet of attack and abuse, too.

The city centre situation became so bad last year that a high level meeting between police chiefs and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service was held.

And publicans pledged to introduce a 'Pub Watch' scheme aimed at tackling the violence problem that has shamed the city.

They promised that known troublemakers would be barred from all pubs and clubs in the city under the new plan.

The pub and off-licence owners are also planning to introduce identity cards to combat under- age drinking.

The problems are exacerbated by Derry's policing problems.

Policing in Derry has always been fraught with difficulties and that has added to the problems on the streets around the pubs and clubs.

Clashes between police and rioters were a city centre feature throughout the Troubles, long before the city's nightife blossomed in the 1990s.

Paramilitarism bred a culture of lawlessness and strong anti- authority feeling which is slow to fade and the hangover from that is an inability by the PSNI to police the area without confrontation.

The PSNI mainly operates a response policing operation in the city centre at night.

Ordinary patrolling is out of the question because of the level of antipathy to the force by many of the youths on the streets.

It leaves officers in a catch 22 situation - a high profile police presence may pacify those who claim the PSNI has opted out of policing the city centre but inflame crowds intent on violence.

Last December, the City Centre Initiative group installed 26 close circuit television cameras in a bid to curb the level of city centre violence.

But according to Pearse Moore of the Nerve Centre, an entertainment and drop -in centre for young people

based in Magazine Street, the CCTV cameras aren't enough.

"We recently took part in a city centre audit in which we asked business people how the streets could be made a safer place.

"Better street lighting and an increased traffic flow came high in the response, but even though the results of the audit were passed on to the relevant authorities, nothing has been done.

"A lot of young people are hanging around the walls at night time. They're drinking and they're carrying on and sometimes it ends in violence. If the areas where they hang out were provided with better lighting, we believe that would help to reduce the problem.

"It only takes one or two people to smash a bottle over someone's head and we have serious assaults and serious injuries.

"We also need the pedestrian zones opened up to through traffic, especially at weekend nights, to help to create a safer environment.

"We have to help to give the young people ownership of the city centre rather than having them milling around in darkened areas getting up to no good," Mr Moore said.

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