Congratulations to Sandwell MBC. Travellers who occupied Greets Green Park were moved on within 24 hours using bailiffs while the police, as usual, were passive observers. This demonstrates what can be done if the local authority only has the will to do it. It also shows that a transit site for travellers in Sandwell provided at the expense of council tax payers is not necessary to remove these pests from the borough.
Again, the local police response was pathetic. An officer was quoted as saying "We are working with Sandwell Council, the local community and the traveller community to help resolve the situation" The function of the police is to enforce the law not to act as a poor man's Jeremy Kyle offering counselling to all and sundry. That is not what we pay our taxes for. Locals claim that the site was broken into. This gives the police the right to require the travellers to leave and to seize their vehicles. Such seizures would deliver the message of the majority of Sandwell residents; that we do not want these disruptive itinerants in the borough.
The Police Commissioner needs to do more than wring his hands in sympathy with those whose land is occupied and put some backbone into the force he administers.