WALTHAMSTOW: Residents "living in fear"

Those who stand up to the youths are threatened with guns and knives, suffer break-ins and have their property stolen, residents have told the Guardian.

Now they are at their wits end and begging police and council officers to do something to break the gangs’ control over their lives.

John Ghanie has been living in the block of flats in Greenelaf Road, Walthamstow, for ten years and says the gangs have threatened to kill him six or seven times.

“My elderly neighbour had to move out because she was so terrified. They spat in her face and hung a dead cat on the knob of her door,” he said.

“Then a drug dealer moved into one of the flats and there was a shooting. They used to do drugs in the hallway. I had to get a group of friends together and scare them off.”

Mr Ghanie, who lives with his wife and two young children in a flat in Greenleaf Road, Walthamstow, said there are problems with Sri Lankan and Pakistani gangs.

As a Muslim convert with good connections in the Pakistani community, he tried to reason with some of them.

But they smashed in his window and burgled his flat and now they threaten him every time they see him, he says.

Two men were arrested but usually the police just move the youths on.

Another woman, a teacher, was told she would be shot after she asked the youths to stop shouting.

And a disabled woman, 39, who lives alone on the ground floor had to hide in a cold hallway for nearly an hour on Bonfire Night after a gang of 15 followed her.

It is believed the flats are a target because each one has an outhouse for storage.

Gangs, vagrants, and the residents suspect prostitutes, use them for sleeping, sex and drug-taking, often leaving clothes and needles behind.

The flats and outhouses are not gated and have benches outside which attract youths and street drinkers who have been pushed out of the town centre by the council’s new non-drinking rules.

But despite repeated pleas to their landlord, Ascham Homes, the area remains unsecured