BAY BUS VANDALS STRIKE AGAIN

From the Herald Express
11 April 2007


Police riding 'shotgun' on a Paignton bus - re-instated more than a month after being suspended in the wake of vandal attacks - sprang into action on its first day.
Officers were ready for trouble when the No 2 Stagecoach service in the resort's Maidenway Road returned on Sunday night.Bus chiefs had withdrawn the town centre to Foxhole service early last month after repeated attacks on their vehicles in the Marldon Road and Colley End Road areas of the town.But after five weeks off the road the bus returned for business over the Easter weekend, taking in an amended route in the hope of by-passing bother.Instead it ran into a group of 10 youths who had congregated in Maidenway Road near its junction with Lammas Lane.But this time the bus company was prepared, as an officer in uniform was one of six passengers on board the vehicle when two youths broke away from the gang to allegedly kick the side of the vehicle.And reinforcements were close by in the form of a trailing police patrol car.The No 2 service had only been back in business for four hours when the bus was attacked just after 10pm. No one was hurt.In early March a Stagecoach driver was lucky not to lose an eye after his bus was allegedly attacked by yobs.The man was driving the No 2 bus in the Stanley Gardens area of Paignton when a gang on an embankment hurled a heavy object down at him.That attack, at 7.20pm on a Tuesday, was the seventh on that service in the previous three weeks.Yesterday Stagecoach's operations manager, Richard McAllister, said the precautions taken in tandem with the police were a measure of the determination to stamp out the menace of anti-social behaviour."This was very swift action on the first evening of the service's return."It sends a clear message we are not messing about. We are putting the route back for the community who had to make do without a service for some time," he said.He revealed the operation had been organised by the police and the company in a bid to thwart those intent on disrupting a valuable public service.He promised Stagecoach would continue taking such action as long as the deterrent was needed.Paignton's neighbourhood beat sergeant, Steve Rook, said: "It's worth some knowing that we will be riding shotgun, as it were, on buses in the area."If people do target buses in such a fashion they might like to know the risks involved."He said police were more than happy to support Stagecoach in their efforts to deal with the nuisance.A 15-YEAR-OLD boy spent the night in police custody before being charged with a public order offence and one of obstruction.He is due to appear before the Bay's youth court on April 18.