Plea to parents as rowdy gangs gather in park

A large group congregated at the Elliot Bandstand and at the shelter beside the Boer War memorial at around 9pm on Saturday evening.

In addition to being a breach of Covid-19 regulations on social gatherings, the presence of the screaming and shouting youngsters proved intimidating and disturbing to people living close by.

Town provost and former Borders police chief councillor Watson McAteer says it’s a situation which cannot be allowed to continue.

Mr McAteer has sympathy that youngsters are bored due to current restrictions, but says that is not an excuse for anti-social behaviour.

He said: “Clearly there are gangs of youngsters raking around in the park area and they shouldn’t be doing it with the Covid. Parents have got to take a long look at where their children are. The weekend before last there was a lot of debris left, broken glass, bottles, crisp papers scattered about the place.

“We will be asking the police to spend more time there and call on them to put up their mobile CCTV system to see what’s going on. There’s a CCTV at the cafe but the police have mobile systems and we’ll ask them to deploy them there. With these Covid restrictions kids shouldn’t be going about in groups in the evening and parents have really got to understand where their kids are and what they are doing.

“Clearly there are restrictions on what kids can do at the moment and they are getting bored but that shouldn’t translate into vandalism or intimidation.”