Police called out to deal with snowballs - and only three are crimes
9:11am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in News
POLICE received nearly 100 calls — about people throwing snowballs.
During the 48 hours after snow fell across the borough on Saturday, people called police to report youngsters playing with snowballs in the streets.
But only three incidents were genuine crimes.
In Farnworth, Great Lever and Little Lever, more than 60 people rang police to report snowballs being thrown.
There were more than 30 incidents reported in the rest of the borough, none of which were deemed criminal.
Police have now advised people only to report snowball-related incidents if they result in damage or injury, or are part of a serious anti-social behaviour problem.
The three snowball crimes reported included damage to a moving car in King Street, Farnworth, a racially motivated attack and a dispute over snowball throwing that ended in an assault.
The other incidents, which were spread across Bolton, mainly involved youngsters playing with snowballs.
No arrests were made.
Cllr Derek Burrows, Bolton’s representative on Greater Manchester Police Authority, was targeted by youngsters throwing snowballs as he drove near Kearsley roundabout. He did not report it to police.
He said: “If you’ve got children playing outside, it would be a waste of police time. But if it’s serious, people should report it. If that snowball had hit my windscreen, it could have been dangerous.”
Police in any of Bolton’s four neighbourhood policing areas would normally expect to receive fewer than 60 calls in total over a weekend at this time of year.
Insp Phil Spurgeon, of the Bolton South Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “We take all anti-social behaviour very seriously, and we will of course respond if people are using snowballs as an excuse to target people.
“But if the call is just about people playing snowballs, I think people need to be a little bit more tolerant.
“We want people to ring if it is a case of extreme antisocial behaviour, but most of these incidents would have been good, clean, innocent fun as we all did when we were kids.”
Police were also called to an incident in Stoneclough where a driver was seen using his car to tow people on a sledge.
Snow started falling just before noon on Saturday, causing gridlock across Bolton as well as disruption of bus and train services.
