Mindless Youths

It's a really mild and sunny day today. Considering it's early February, it makes a change to have the sun out and have almost Spring-like weather.

I have been sitting here on the iMac, viewing emails this morning and suddenly there was the sound of an engine outside. I opened the curtains and looked out across the garden and I could see a youth riding what appeared to be a mechanised go-cart along the Redway. I remember as a youth myself, building similar contraptions, but without any sort of motor on them, just a very flimsy construction held together with little more than a few nuts and bolts and then pushing them down hills near where I used to live. But this  was mechanical. It was moving at quite a speed. It went past in one direction, and then came back in the opposite direction. When I first looked there was one youth, but later two further youths were either riding it or standing around watching. It could have been a sort of motorised lawn mower that had been converted to go at speed. Whatever it was it shouldn't have been driven along the Redway as these paths are intended for walkers and cyclists and certainly not motorised vehicles. My concern was that someone was likely to get injured if this machine was driven at such speed. An elderly person might have walked out into the Redway and then been hit by the youths jaunting up and down the Redway.

I had heard and seen this going on a few weeks ago and thought then that it was an accident waiting to happen. I thought it might be an idea to inform the local Police and let them deal with it. I already had the Police station's telephone number so I managed to telephone them and gave details.

I went out in the car briefly to do some shopping and when I returned there were two female Police officers standing on our doorstep. I was quite surprised how quickly the call had been taken and responded to. They asked me one or two further questions, and I could not hear the youths riding the go-cart contraption along the Redway. They said that they would pass on the information to the local Community Police Officer for this area and thanked me for my help. It is, of course, obvious that the youths saw the Police arrive and made sure that they were out of the way, as they would have known that they were likely to get into trouble because of their actions. I'll keep an eye out for their further appearance and let the Police know as soon as the youths re-appear.