'Britain's roughest street' where pimps wait and 'you don't go out after dark'
Two decades after documentary crews dubbed it the “roughest street” in Britain, a YouTuber has revisited Bristol’s Stapleton Road to see what had changed.
Stapleton Road in Easton, Bristol, was visited by an urban explorer, who filmed his trip for YouTube channel UKExplored. In his video, which has more than 40,000 views, he explains: “Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, Stapleton Road in Easton in Bristol was widely regarded as one of, if not the, most dangerous roads in the country”.
He added: “It was crazy dangerous, we’re talking murders, serious assaults, pimps running the show, crazy drug problems, it had it all.” Although the video fails to capture any crime occurring, beyond a discarded needle under a bridge, the comments section under the YouTube clip is full of members of the public who claim to have lived in Easton during the bad old days, the Star reports.
One claims to have "kept a machete under the bed" as crime was so rife. Other members of the public claimed Easton was one of the most dangerous areas of Bristol.
YouTube commenters were shocked at the amount of graffiti on display (Youtube/UK Explored)An earlier report from BristolLive carried one woman's claim that she was left unable to leave her home for fear she would be set upon by a group gathered at a nearby part of the street. She says the members of the group drink alcohol, take drugs, urinate, get into fights and aggravate one of the residents who she believes has mental health problems.
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She said: "I haven’t felt safe to leave my house after dark because there is nobody else around. They drink and do drugs openly all day, right in the middle of the street with no attempt to hide it. I can smell weed and I can see powder but I haven’t explored further than that. There’s often a lot of cans left. They get into fights a couple times a week.
While the video is light on gangland violence there is certainly a lot of discarded furniture (Youtube/UK Explored)“We have a separate but possibly connected problem of fly-tipping and at one point there was a table left out and they smashed it up and started using the table legs to fight. When that’s going on outside your front door, how are you supposed to feel safe?"
While crime may not be much in evidence on the video, in fact the YouTuber states that Easton isn’t even in Bristol’s top five most crime-ridden areas - there is certainly a lot of rubbish on display on the streets of Easton.
The video captures discarded furniture on street coroners, bin bags strewn across pavements and boarded up houses with the front garden full of litter.
The YouTube video shows evidence of illegal drug abuse under the bridge (Youtube/UK Explored)Members of the public in Easton we ratted by another crime in which bystanders saw a bike rider allegedly make off with a person's wallet in a park after threatening their victim with a knife.
A police statement at the time read: "Two unknown men approached the victim in the park and was threatened with a bladed article and made off with the victim’s wallet."
The crime spot was not remembered fondly by those who had moved out of the area. One member of the public wrote: "Barely went out in the dark by myself."
Another wrote: "What's up with all the graffiti? I don't think I've ever seen that much in one place other than at the side of railway tracks near London."
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