NO EXCUSE FOR ABUSE

While I fully understand the concerns of residents about levels of
drug-related crime there can be no excuse for mounting personal attacks on
those trying so hard to deal with the situation.

The attack on me (Letters, July 7) was also by implication an attack on all
agencies involved in tackling substance misuse and warrants the strongest
response.

My quote to the crime reporter of the Mail last week about being unaware of
certain issues related only to the incidents reported around Pearson Avenue
School.

I was very much aware of the wider problems in the Spring Bank area, other
parts of the city and the East Riding.

Few could be more aware than myself and my colleagues about the huge task
we face. Over a five-year period I have reviewed every drug-related
fatality in the East Riding and Hull - about 165 - and I knew many of those
who died and their families.

As a consequence of recommendations from the reviews, services have
improved. Deaths have reduced by 50 per cent. But one death is still one
too many.

Before my retirement from Humberside Police in 1995, I attended numerous
post mortems of overdose victims and in two instances was present with
relatives when life support machines were turned off.

Yes, I do live in a village. A village where over the past four years three
young men have also died. The suggestion that drugs are only an inner city
problem is a myth.

While the drug forums are proving successful, the Drugs Action Team has
established a hotline telephone number for residents, parents, users or
agency personnel to seek guidance or share frustrations about perceived
lack of action. Members of the public have my assurance that if they use
this facility the appropriate organisation will be informed to act quickly.

I know at first hand the misery drugs cause. That is why I do the job.
Whether my colleagues and I have made a difference others can judge but we
have tried hard and I do not want lessons about the "coal face" from an
unidentified letter-writer.

If he or she would care to call my colleagues or me on the hotline number
0800 138 0941 we will deal with problems he or she may have in the area if
they have not received a response from elsewhere.

Only so much can be done locally. We live in a corrupt society where the
black economy is accepted as the norm.

Geoff Ogden, Senior co-ordinator, East Riding and Hull Combined Drug Action
Teams