Episode 9 Street Patrol UK

Our lives are blighted by anti-social behaviour,

whether it's nuisance neighbours...

Will you let us in, please?

..graffiti on the streets,

or too much booze.

You need to make your way away from here right now.

This is the story of the police officers...

This is the police, are you in here?

You have been drinking a bit today, haven't you?

..council wardens...

This is anti-social behaviour because it effects everybody.

..and local volunteers whose job it is to keep it off our streets.

Let's go do some good.

Welcome to Street Patrol UK.

Today...

You could go flying on them tins! I can see it.

..Enfield's environmental health team on an emergency house clearance

for a habitual hoarder.

The biggest problem is, now obviously, it's attracting the rats.

The local residents who are tackling taggers and graffiti vandals

to reclaim and restore their neighbourhood.

This basin has 200 years of history.

The graffiti has no place in that history or its future.

And the case of the mysterious missing postboxes.

Why on earth would anyone want to nick one of these?!

They're stolen to be sold

and even a relatively common one like this

can go for several hundred pounds.

In this country, we value our personal freedom highly,

and most people would argue that how we choose to live our lives

is our own business.

But when our lifestyle or behaviour threatens the wellbeing of others,

that's when environmental health officers need to step in.

The suburb of Enfield has a rising

population of more than 300,000 people,

and it's down to environmental health officers Claire Fletcher and Karen Gingell

to make sure these people have a decent quality of life.

Their daily rounds take in the kind of stuff

that most of us would shudder to deal with.

I would describe our job as anything that causes a risk of disease

or a nuisance to someone in their own home.

The public as well, a massive part of our job is interacting with them

and trying to get them on board with what we're trying to achieve.

When rubbish is not properly dealt with,

you get all sorts of knock-on problems

and Claire and Karen have been called to deal with an infestation

of the worst kind.

There's been a problem with rats in the area.

We know that both the blocks either side have had problems.

This particular block,

the rats are actually up in the roof area.

They've actually started living from the top

and they're working their way down.

Anxious residents are keen to find out why the rats have moved in.

You've got a hole here, look.

That's a new one.

Because they were coming up in our electric cupboard.

So what's happened is, where you have blocked them off there,

they've found the next entrance in.

And it doesn't take them long to work out what's happened.

Your bin cupboard's here which is your perfect food source

and although it's reasonably clean, you're leaving them open.

People don't realise that while there's a food source there

and they're causing that food source,

they're going to come in from quite a distance to source the food.

They've got a perfect little picnic going on there

and they are very happy, thank you very much.

But to get rid of the rats, Karen wants to find where they're living.

This is the main nest.

They've obviously dug a nest under the root system here.

It's a massive rats' nest. It follows all the way round.

Going under the wall and obviously getting into the flats

from that side so what we need to do is get this main nest treated

so that we can kill the rats from source.

One infestation in hand, the pair must now deal with another call out

where food waste is causing problems for the neighbours.

We're heading off to meet a gentleman that's been hoarding food.

We have served an abatement notice on him now to clear up the house.

This is a property we have dealt with in the past a few times

and the neighbours have complained of smells from the property and rats

so we do know of this gentleman.

The neighbour who made the call is struggling to deal

with the horrific effects of rotting food next door.

House is full of flies all the time, blue bottles, green bottles,

house flies... I can't open my windows. I can't open my cupboards.

-If you stayed here for another ten minutes, you would hear rats...

-Running around?

It has got to the point where we're thinking, do we move?

The smell, particularly at the front of the house from the bins, is quite a problem.

I can smell it standing at the porch.

The flies are a problem. They've got rats under the floors and in the cavity of the walls.

So they are suffering quite a bit.

And that's the only real reason that we can get involved in these

when it becomes a problem affecting someone else

and serve notice and do a clearance.

The hoarder agrees to let them in.

Right, I'm going in!

Just be careful.

The house has clearly deteriorated hugely since their last visit.

This was clear last time, the floor, wasn't it?

Still got rotting food.

April...

Let me have a little look.

It's not great.

Any cheap food that he can get hold of, he'll bring in.

The biggest problem is, now obviously, it's attracting the rats.

He is also starting to store stuff outside.

Not so much food but bottles and stuff.

And the bins are in a bit of a state.

More meat here, June.

Looks like last year's June.

Hoarding is a disorder

that is believed to affect more than a million people in the UK.

It leaves sufferers unable to throw anything away

which can lead to an ever-mounting problem.

Bedroom, which he said doesn't need any attention but...

..beg to differ on that one.

It's not a very nice part of our job,

having to root through people's rooms.

The house clearly can't be left like this.

I think we're looking at, at least a week,

a week and half's worth of clearance here.

He has got himself in a bit of pickle like this a couple of times,

and we have cleared him out. This would be the third time.

But he's never really engaged with any help afterwards

so we're hoping this time, he may engage with social services

try and get some help.

Claire and Karen want to help the hoarder break the cycle.

My biggest problem is...

You can't resist a bargain, can you?

Some of the bargains are definitely...

But do you know what, you're actually wasting your money.

But then you don't get rid of it and then you buy some more

and some more and it keeps going like that and that's the problem.

He's not a bad person. It's not a choice he has made consciously, to live like that.

He's not being difficult, he's not trying to upset anyone else.

It's just the way his mind is set at the moment.

It is obviously a mental health condition of sorts

but unless he engages and asks for help, there's no forcing it on him.

Would you like to be able to invite your friends round?

I know you have got that lady friend that refuses to come in.

I'd love to see you sitting with your friends

having a nice cup of tea. You know, it has been a long time.

But before anyone can come in for tea, there's a huge clean up to do.

Later, we'll be back with Claire and the team

to see if they can move a mountain of rubbish.

A lot more stuff will have to go

than he's probably willing to let go.

The red postbox.

An British landmark, an icon all over the world

and an important part of community life for over 200 years.

But increasingly, it seems that some mindless criminals

are doing their best to wipe out this precious piece of our British heritage.

Robert Cole is passionate about postboxes.

He belongs to a group of 500 enthusiasts who maintain a database

detailing postboxes across Britain.

Nice Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon,

I'm going to spend doing a bit of survey work

of a few of the nation's 115,500 letter boxes.

But Robert is concerned that some of our mail boxes are going missing.

Up and down the country,

thieves have been stealing an alarming number of them.

Ripping out stand-alone pillar boxes

or dismantling the ones built into walls.

Stealing a letter box,

they're stealing something from the community

and from the heritage of that community.

It's a big worry for Royal Mail.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number

of boxes that have been stolen.

We've seen this in the North West of England,

and in North Wales, in East Anglia

and also in Sussex and along the southern coast.

Incredibly, it seems that 100 have been stolen in the last year alone.

People want the letters inside... Not quite sure why they'd want that

but perhaps there'll be money in the letters.

Second reason is that they are stolen for their scrap value.

Although it has a cast iron front there which will be quite heavy, it has a steel back...

In the group, we call these "tin lizzies" actually,

because they're a bit tinny and they come from the reign of Elizabeth II.

Very common... But the third reason is for resale value

and even a relatively common one like this

can go for several hundred pounds.

Some rare pillar boxes can sell for larger sums.

There's interest in some of our older postboxes as postal heritage

and over the years we have sold, legitimately sold, a few postboxes

so there are people out there who collect postboxes

and it is not impossible that these people would be interested

in collecting some more boxes, particularly some of our rarer ones.

Many postboxes in rural locations haven't been changed for decades.

Which perhaps might explain the spate of thefts from villages in Sussex.

PC Daryl Holter sees the impact such thefts have on the local community.

In these remote rural settings, it's viewed as a lifeline for some.

They want to be able to contact their friends, their families

and if that postbox, if that facility is taken away,

they can't then get to communicate with their friends and family.

For the residents of the quaint village of Etchingham,

near Tunbridge Wells,

the loss of their historical George VI postbox was a shock.

I came out to post a letter.

I walked up to where the postbox was which was here...

I went to put my letter in and there was no postbox, just the stand.

Underneath, there was tiny fragment of red metal

which we understand was obviously from it.

But, yeah, it was pretty shocking that someone would steal it.

One minute it was there, the next minute it wasn't.

I understand it was quite an old one.

Presumably somebody thought it was valuable, but it's a shame.

It was beautiful so it's a shame that it is gone.

There weren't any witnesses,

probably because thieves chose the cover of night to strike.

Behind the back of here, you will see, there's a post here.

You can see where the red was on the post

where the original box was on the post, held on by two metal straps.

Those straps were cut and the box was removed.

To think that somebody could come

and steal something that's actually an historical item.

I remember my children doing projects about the village

and actually taking pictures of that postbox

to include in their projects.

That's stealing a little piece of Etchingham history

which really is irritating.

Ironically, the crime took place opposite a church

which is the final resting place

for the designer of the world's first stamp,

Henry Corbould, who created the Penny Black.

We have a splendid memorial to him

and he must be turning in his grave

to see that part of Britain's postal heritage has vanished.

People steal things like that

and the children won't have a sense of history growing up

and it doesn't teach them respect for looking after the things

that we should treasure, these things, they're important.

A nasty, mean crime.

To steal the postbox is such a pointless thing to do.

It damages us, I don't see it does anybody else any good

and whoever collects those stolen items is just as guilty as the people who steal them.

It's not just communities losing their heritage which is a problem.

There's often a lot of criminal damage done

in the process of nicking the boxes.

Some of the postboxes we've seen stolen are inset into old walls

and I've been to a job where, unfortunately,

a very, very old flint wall has been pulled over.

That wall has been there for many years

along with the building that it surrounds but again

they've just wanted the box so we're talking theft and we're talking criminal damage.

And while Royal Mail has to replace the boxes,

the historical designs are lost forever.

We don't replace like with like.

We can't replace a postbox from the 1940s with something identical

so we will often have to rebuild an entire wall

to put a wall-based pillar box back in again.

We may have to find some other suitable venue nearby

if we can't replace exactly where the pillar box came out.

It can cost us several thousand pounds.

But there is good news from Etchingham at least.

Two men were arrested in connection with postbox thefts in Sussex earlier this year.

And Royal Mail will be pursuing anyone who they track down

handling stolen postboxes through the courts.

It's very unlikely that legitimate collectors

will actually want to buy a stolen box.

If you've bought a box legitimately,

you will have a bill of sale from Royal Mail.

So, if you've bought a stolen box,

even if you're 3rd or 4th person through whose hands it's passed,

it's not your box. It's still our box.

You'd be handling stolen goods

and we would be looking to prosecute anybody that does that.

In the meantime, Robert Cole is devoting himself

to staying one step ahead of the thieves,

acting fast to save any boxes in danger.

Somebody might come along and think it's ripe for stealing,

because it's not been taken care of.

I'll definitely take a note of this and report back.

It's conceivable that it might have been subject to a theft attempt.

I think it's probably more likely a lorry or tractor or car or something

has run into it and knocked it sideways.

But someone might look at it and say,

perhaps I can take it away and flog it.

So I'll make a brief note

of its identification number... 214.

It's an Elizabeth II.

I'll take a quick photograph of it

so that I can try and, as it were, raise the alarm,

tell somebody at Royal Mail

that this has happened and we're keeping pressure on to make sure that

hopefully vulnerable letter boxes are less vulnerable in future.

Later, the street pastors of Shoreditch

who are drawing on their faith to spread goodwill

and keep an eye out for the party people of London's East End.

All these people have come from all over the world to be in Shoreditch

where I was brought up and I never wanted to stay.

I've been out and about on a street patrol of my own

to hear what bothers you about Britain today.

Now, Jean, you're a Frenchman living in the UK,

-how long have you been here?

-I have been here for 17 years.

Wow. And your English is obviously very good. Better than my French.

Jean, can I ask you, what have you witnessed that you think is pretty anti-social?

People who just don't respect others and make too much noise

and making their voices heard just to show off

but not doing anything really.

Can you give me an example? Where have you witnessed that?

Near council estates where you have people hanging around, smoking

and doing wrong things just to show that they are there,

forgetting that there is other people living by

and have the right to do so.

What have you seen or witnessed, Jean,

that you've found dirty or disgusting?

People who just leave their dog to poo and not cleaning up.

I mean, sometimes if you go in the woods and you walk,

people are actually cleaning up and leaving the trash out

which I think is twice as worse.

And you have witnessed that, have you?

Yes, I've seen that. If you go on footpaths in the woods

you can see a lot of bags hanging off trees and bushes

and it is poo and you know that.

Anti-social behaviour that annoys me,

one is spitting in the street.

I do not like swearing.

Because I have had a few incidents with that...

Obviously out with my grandson which is not nice

and he picks those words up.

It is the litter on the streets now.

We're getting all this, sort of, rubbish.

People that haven't got the...

Years ago, you used to take it home with you in your pocket and...

You know now we just can't...

People can't educate themselves now anymore.

Everybody else has got to pick it up for them, you know?

And then when you confront these people,

you say, have you dropped this? They look at you as if you're something from outer space!

Wherever you live, you're bound to have noticed graffiti

and what are called tags scrawled on your walls.

In fact, you might have actually got so used to seeing it,

that you don't notice it anymore.

But in one part of our capital city,

the local residents have not only noticed it,

they decide to tackle it head on,

and reclaim their surroundings from the graffiti vandals.

For nearly 200 years,

the Regent's Canal has been a bustling thoroughfare

cutting through the very heart of London.

And while it may no longer be used for hauling cargo through the city,

it remains a much-loved route for walkers, cyclists and commuters.

In Islington, the canal runs behind the Hanover Primary School

and the kids have transformed the towpath behind their school

into a lovely urban garden.

Peas!

Overall, I think the garden has been a real boost to the local area

because a lot of kids in this area don't have gardens,

don't have big spaces so this is sometimes their first opportunity

to see how things grow and plant things, such as my daughter,

and they get such a thrill and they're so excited when we bring them out here.

But there's one thing that is blighting this green space

and that is a plague of graffiti.

Dick Vincent, from The Canal and River Trust

works as a London Towpath Ranger.

Today he's joining local residents to help out with the clean-up operation.

Welcome to the very, very first, as far as I'm aware,

Friends Of Regent's Canal graffiti clean-up.

So, most of the graffiti is from car type spray

which will come off if we use this graffiti gel remover.

So we're going to paint some of this on, we're going to get some water,

and we're going to wash it off and it's as simple as that.

And it might not remove absolutely all of the graffiti

but it will certainly make a big dent in the visual impact of what you see here.

So, I suggest we just get started! Let's go!

Paint it on, we'll leave it for 20 minutes or so

and then we will come along and scrub it off.

I work on a number of projects to improve the canals.

For the function along the towpaths,

that's about turning these places from being just routes,

just places people travel through,

into actual places that people enjoy and can use

on a very basic level, really.

And it's for that reason that so many Islington residents

have come together to clean up the tow path.

I need a tall person.

-Oh, am I tall enough?

-Yes.

This garden has brightened up the area

and the graffiti now stands out like a sore thumb.

It's a shame to see it along here when there is this lovely garden

that's trying to accomplish something beautiful.

We've got seven or eight people turning up now to help do this.

We haven't advertised it a great deal, this is just word of mouth

and people who live in the area

who really care about what they want to see down here.

Everyone is working hard to stop this anti-social activity

from dragging their local area down.

This particular stretch of towpath

has been somewhere that people tend to avoid because it's been hijacked.

This is a listed building. We're in a conservation area.

This basin has 200 years of history.

The graffiti has no place in that history or its future.

That's a lot better now.

I used to live round here. I used to fish here a lot

and I have always enjoyed the waterway

and even though I haven't fished here for a while, I still value it

and I thought I'll start getting involved as I live nearby.

The clean-up team are hoping that their operation

will send a clear message to would-be vandals

Graffiti is always a signal that

an area is not being looked after, supervised,

and I think when people see a bit of graffiti,

it gives them the incentive, the go-ahead, the green light to make it worse.

And it's not just the adults who are critical of the taggers' handiwork.

I don't mind good graffiti...

Like, nice things like swans and stuff

but I don't really like people writing their names on it.

I don't think that's very positive.

The tags aren't that interesting.

If they were, I'd quite like the juxtaposition

of some stuff on the wall and the plants in the garden,

but they're not.

After nearly three hours of vigorous scrubbing,

the action team have cleaned up the towpath

and restored the children's garden.

I'm really pleased with today's event actually.

The graffiti has faded,

I don't think we can say it's entirely gone

but want we were aiming to do today

was more about bringing the community together

and making a stand about the graffiti in this area.

It shows we can make a difference

by preventing the destruction of places we care about.

It certainly started to restore the natural brick

and these are London stock, this is what London was built on

and these bricks probably would have come down the Regent's Canal

and this is very much part of the heritage of this area

and that's why we try to love them in the way we do.

Anti-social behaviour, be it intimidation,

excessive noise, fly-tipping, graffiti or vandalism,

is just not what you or I should expect to have to put up with.

But there are people, all over the UK, whose lives are ruined by it.

So it's just as well, there are people we can turn to.

We're on the front line

with the highly skilled teams of council workers...

It's my job to get the evidence.

We'll find her and she'll pay.

..police officers...

I saw you urinate on the pavement.

..and volunteers who are committed

to keeping our streets safe and clean

and taking on our anti-social battles on a daily basis,

to make sure that our lives are not blighted by other people's bad behaviour.

This is Street Patrol UK.

Let's get back to what bothers you in Britain today.

Really nice to meet you.

Now, tell me what bothers you about anti-social

-behaviour out there on the street.

-Yes, I hate to see drunk people.

OK, and you see that a lot, do you?

Yeah, even over there by the library, a lady

and a woman was there real drunk, and the lady was hitting the man,

hitting the man and the man was saying nothing.

-Was that during daylight hours?

-In daytime. I couldn't say...

Like one o'clock, two o'clock?

I think it's really disgusting when you see people urinating

in the street, men and women, but also when they spit in the street.

And it affects everybody and it's so unhygienic and disgusting.

Most of the arguments, fights, scuffles, are usually over drugs.

If it's not drugs, it's drink.

We have them pulling up outside the house

and it's obvious what they're doing.

You can see them passing it through the window.

-The police don't get involved, the police don't bother.

-What do you do?

It's everywhere. There's kids outside schools now that are having

stuff passed to them.

It was going on when they were at school and it still goes on now.

It's even worse now.

If you're walking along the pavement

and you have these children coming towards you,

it's normally teenagers, and they're oblivious of you

and they won't move out of the way for you,

and you think to yourself, "Why should I sidestep for them?"

Once upon a time, you used to be polite to your elders.

If I see someone who I think is specifically being targeted or

something rude's being said out loud, to anybody,

not just an old person, I will always say, "Sorry?" or "Excuse me?

"What are you saying?"

Try and get them to say that to me,

being slightly younger and more willing to take them on.

We're back with Enfield's Environmental Health Team.

Their mission - to clear the home of a compulsive hoarder whose

house is stacked so high with rotting food,

it's causing major problems for the neighbours.

Environmental Health officers Claire Fletcher

and Karen Gingell are gearing up for a major clean up job.

They've been called to a house in Enfield where the resident's

inability to throw anything away has resulted in a plague of rats,

flies and bad smells for neighbours on the street.

The resident has now been served with notice that they intend

to do a clearance on the house.

Along with their team, Claire and Karen are ready for the worst.

Get some spray in here.

'It's really hard work, very hot, and not much air going through'

the house, lots of flies, the smell's quite horrific,

particularly in the kitchen.

The most immediate problem here is the build-up of food collected,

not just over months, but years.

There's a lot of meat in there, a couple of years old,

not refrigerated, just on the floor.

April.

February.

January.

September 2010.

2006.

2000.

1997.

It's incredible.

If they was to eat that, imagine how ill they would be.

'We found food as far back as 1992.'

There's been food in every room in the house,

including the toilet, the loft, the shed, every bin, cupboard,

that he's got, so we've found food everywhere.

Two ten.

Can I have another bag, please?

Look at that.

Never seen so many flies in your life.

No matter how unappealing these items may seem to everyone else,

hoarders often cling to the clutter they've collected.

Even though he's had to accept that a clean up is necessary,

the hoarder is still reluctant to throw anything away.

I've got a feeling there's going to be mice in here.

So, if that's the case, then a lot more of this stuff will have

to go than he's probably willing to let go.

If we can clean it, it can stay. If it can't be cleaned before

-I leave, then it goes.

-It will be clean.

-I wish to keep... Remember, I turned round and said before.

-Yeah, what?

It will be a case of out, everybody.

'It's all about compromise. What he can keep, what he can't keep.

'If he starts getting a bit irate about something, we'll say,'

"OK, if you allow us to get rid of that, then we'll allow you to keep this."

The increase in rats and pests,

both inside and outside of the house,

have been a nightmare for the neighbours,

but getting rid of vermin on this scale is no easy task.

I've had a chat with them and advised that it's likely to

get a bit worse before it gets better because the rats will scatter

so they're expecting that, so once we have removed the food source we can

do a proper pest control treatment and get that under control.

This is one of the rat holes that we have found, this is

an adjoining wall so this goes into next door.

So, obviously, once the rats are under the floorboards

they go right across the whole terrace.

We found a big rat hole up above the fridge here.

They are getting into upstairs through there, and that goes into the bathroom.

They're making progress -

and the resident is even beginning to join in.

You all right? How you getting on up there?

It's all right, I need some more bags.

Oh good. What, to go?

Here you go.

Good. We are getting somewhere.

I just found some Post Office savings books he said

from 1957, which he said he was looking for so that is a good find.

We will keep going until it is all gone.

Two truckloads down and the house is beginning to

reappear from under the rubbish.

We've taken about seven tonnes of rubbish from the property,

mainly food.

Been really good, working hard himself,

not been too resistant about throwing anything particular away.

-This is to go, yeah?

-Yeah.

-OK.

But it's a very expensive process.

With this particular property we're looking at around £7,000,

which will include hopefully the pest control treatment,

the cleaning of the property, all the way through to removal,

officer time and unfortunately that bill does go to the home owner,

and if you can't afford to pay that the charge gets put on the property.

It will be worth it when we can sit down and relax and don't have

to trip over food and everything else and clamber his way in.

The neighbours too will be hoping their lives will

improve from this point onwards.

I think the neighbours are just hoping this will be the last

time that we have to be involved

and that there will be some help put in place for him.

I'm really proud of you, I think you've done really fantastic.

Although he was reluctant to clean up,

the team have helped the resident make real progress today.

Don't get me wrong, I know full well a lot of this is self-inflicted.

I know but it's not an intentional way of life, is it?

I'm sure you didn't start out thinking,

this is how I want to live my life...

And the team has pulled off an incredible transformation.

There's just one final job to be done.

The fridge has been emptied of rotten food,

I am going to clean this and that is our final job before we go.

You will be glad to be rid of us, won't you?

In one sense, no disrespect intended.

And are you going to keep it clean?

That is our biggest question.

-I will try.

-Good, that's good to hear.

Let's hope this is the last time the team are called to clear this

house and that the hoarder does get help to keep his life

and home the way he would really like it to be.

On this programme we often see how towns and cities are magnets

for anti-social behaviour at night-time -

and we also see what tough measures are needed to keep it all in check.

So it's nice to come across a group of people who are happy to get

involved with whatever the streets may throw at them - especially

when all they want to do spread is a little goodwill and happiness.

London's Tower Hamlets where two worlds exist side by side.

It's in the heart of the old East End,

famous for welcoming generations of immigrants from all over the world.

With a host of rich traditions

and culture, the area an attraction to many people.

And it's especially lively at night.

For the Street Pastors - a Christian based group who have been

patrolling the area since 2010 that poses plenty of challenges.

We have a wonderful team of about 32 Street Pastors who are absolutely

faithful and committed to going out regularly at least once a month.

Well, God is good so shall we pray, let us pray.

Every weekend the group meets at Street Pastor Chapel to

prepare in body and spirit before they go on patrol.

Their mission is founded on simple values - to engage with people on

the streets of Tower Hamlets, to care,

listen and help keep the peace.

Georgina Stride is their team leader.

Our teams are really mixed from ethnicity to class and yeah,

we are very relaxed, we love people and we just get on with people.

You've got your slippers? Anyone else?

And lollipops? Lollipops and slippers.

They pack utility bags full of items that might be

needed in the long night ahead.

Water, have you got your water?

Have you got the alarms?

Right, come on, guys.

On leaving Street Pastor HQ

they split up into groups of twos and threes.

OK, so remember how we're going tonight. Carol, Raja, with me.

Ready to deal with revellers who flock to bars,

clubs and pubs in the area.

My role tonight is to be the senior Street Pastor and my role is to

take care of the team that has come out, so I have five Street Pastors

out with me tonight. There's been an accident, let's go and have a look.

No sooner have they hit the high road,

than it appears a biker has taken a tumble.

Hello, are you all right?

Are you OK, though?

Is there anything we can do?

Do you want a lollipop to keep you going?

Selling it next week, going to get less for it now, aren't I?

Was just going along and the front went.

Does he need medical attention?

I think I fell away from the bike, I pulled myself away from it.

-Thank you, darling.

-Good luck, hope you're OK.

I am gutted.

It's the right one hurting.

I think it's all right though.

I don't think it's broken or nothing.

I am going to try and stand up anyway, yeah. Be a hero on camera!

Come on, be a hero!

That looks good.

All right then.

Lollipops might not heal him but it's all

part of the Street Pastor's mission to keep people well and happy.

We've just come into Shoreditch and we do a little

bit into Shoreditch then we turn back into Brick Lane.

What we normally do is walk, we talk,

we say hello to people - if anyone needs any help we offer them help.

We found someone's purse, a cleaner has just found it

and we have gone through it.

Someone's night could be ruined by losing their purse -

but it's found its way to safe hands.

I might be here all day.

Georgina springs into action...

"If you have found this card please hand it into a bank or branch."

I mean it's a lost card, you'd think it would be quite

an emergency and somebody would pick up.

Anyway, let's walk.

Karen, you are with me, you guys go ahead and I am standing back.

The Street Pastors are part of a national network.

With around 250 separate teams and 9,000 trained

volunteers across the UK, they're instantly recognisable.

-I know you guys from Watford...

-Have a nice evening.

Take care, ladies, thank you very much.

By 10:30 the pubs and bars are rammed.

There are plenty of late night partygoers on the streets.

-Where you from?

-Originally or like...?

The Street Pastors are keeping an eye out,

making sure that revellers don't come to any harm.

'Really, just anyone we bump into, even if they've had too much

'drink and if they're not with anybody or they need any help.'

Generally so far, most people have been fine.

ALL TALK AT ONCE

Nice to meet you, have a lovely night out.

Enjoy yourselves, but try not to overdo it!

Their religious views aren't strictly part of the mix.

We are not out to try and get people to convert and follow Jesus.

I'd be stressed out if they think

I'd try and have a debate with people - we don't do that.

You OK?

Do you need a drink of water?

Have you got any water?

Because he looks like he really is quite gone,

not managing to get a few words out at all.

Along the way, the Pastors draw on their utility bags,

filled with thoughtful items for clubbers' every need.

Mostly tonight we've given out lollipops

and some water to people and flip-flops.

The flip-flops are a favourite, generally for women,

although we have given them to men sometimes,

but women who are wearing very high heels, by the time they've

finished partying their legs are killing them.

This is an alarm, a panic alarm. Can you do it?

SHRILL BEEPING

I'm just waiting to see if anyone would come to me.

I think it frightens people away.

If you were being attacked, I think that would frighten the guy.

But luckily no-one's under attack tonight, meaning Georgina can

help the tourists find their way.

I just find it amazing that these guys are from Spain and Italy,

all these people have come from all over the world to

be in Shoreditch where I was brought up and never wanted to stay.

Now everyone wants to be here.

One of the most popular tourist spots is Brick Lane.

It's here that Albert is patrolling, at 76 he's one of the most

senior members of the team.

Well, this evening, we're out in Brick Lane here,

looking out for the community really.

We can never tell from one night to another night

when we go out as it is always different.

There is no sort of set pattern at all.

Albert's happy to dedicate his nights to keeping the peace.

Most times we don't have any... problems with people.

Walk this way my friend, how do you do!

SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY

We've got to know the people in the area of course, the local

shopkeepers and restaurants and the doormen on the doors.

Have you been busy tonight?

Yes, it was.

I am out on the streets just like you, looking for trouble.

OK, well, we don't look for trouble but have a lollipop.

Umm, hang on, are you giving sweets to kids?

This could be taken in the wrong way.

No, it's all right, we give these out because people like them.

Give me a high five, brother.

-I like what you're doing.

-Bless you, take care.

-See you later.

2am and the Pastors are on their final patrol.

Georgina is trying to stay upbeat.

Brain is slightly tired but I am trying to stay alert

and awake because it could potentially still get quite

lively as we make our way back.

It's often at this time of night that things get rather messy.

There is a lot of puke everywhere, yeah.

I dunno who's going to clean it up but we ain't.

I'm glad it is not one of the things we do!

For Georgina and her crew it's the end of another

night of keeping people safe and sound.

I enjoy doing it, but I must admit I don't enjoy recovering

because once I am finished I am quite hyped up

so I can't sleep right away.

I dunno, I sometimes don't go to bed until sometimes five o'clock in the morning,

takes me a while to chill down.

Proof that sometimes all it takes is a bit of good cheer to keep

anti-social behaviour at bay.

Well, that's your lot for today. Thanks for watching.