Pleas to Council Have “Fallen on Deaf Ears”, Fear City claim
Fear City plan to put up more posters after their recent meetings with Portsmouth City Council have ended with no agreement.
The activist group have been campaigning to highlight and reduce Portsmouth’s high violent and sexual crime rates since October 2022. This comes after the Office for National Statistics announced that Portsmouth’s most common crimes in 2022 were violent and sexual offences, with 12,994 cases occurring over the year. This is 6% higher than 2021’s figure, which Fear City say suggests that the council “aren’t doing enough” to make the city safer.
The activist who started the Fear City group wanted to remain anonymous. They said: “We have been part of many council meetings trying to bring this all too common problem to their attention, but it has fallen on deaf ears.” They said that not being listened to is why the group decided to put up the first round of posters, back in October of 2022.
They added: “We had to be more unapologetic about spreading our message of what is going on.”
Despite this, the Fear City posters were torn down relatively quickly since they were thought to be bad for local business and were allegedly having a negative impact on the numbers of people coming to the city.
Since then, there have been five sexual assaults and three stabbings in the Guildhall area.
In June 2022, the council launched a project partnering with Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Service (PARCS) to encourage the people of Portsmouth to share where they had been assaulted. They then created a map of places in Portsmouth to show where residents feel unsafe, but, since then, have done nothing to make those places safer.
