\u201cThis place might look bad but it\u2019s not, the people are good people,\u201d said one woman before turning to her young daughter and asking: \u201cIs this place bad?\u201d The girl shakes her head vigorously.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a difficult thing to say given the week\u2019s events in Grangetown and South Bank on Teesside.<\/p>\n
Around the corner is the burned-out shell of a house that was deliberately set on fire on Wednesday<\/a>, killing Natalie McDonald, 34, and her seven-year-old niece Valentina Foster. Metres away is the A66 where, less than a mile away on Saturday, a head-on crash<\/a> killed seven people, including two police officers.<\/p>\n Cleveland police had linked the crash to organised crime and initially said they could not rule out it also being connected to the house fire, but on Friday said there was no link.<\/p>\n The news will be of no surprise to neighbours and well-wishers who this week gathered sombrely opposite the house in Birchington Avenue, Grangetown. They had already said there was no link.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s smackheads. That\u2019s the problem round here,\u201d said one neighbour.<\/p>\n The house in Grangetown where Valentina Foster, seven, and her aunt, Natalie McDonald, died after it was was deliberately set on fire. Photograph: Mark Pinder\/The Guardian<\/p>\n John Kirton, the brother of McDonald, told reporters: \u201cMy sister was not involved with anything to do with gangs, or the [crash on the] A66.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what makes this so senseless. People think they can do whatever they like. There\u2019s some terrible people in the world and now my sister and Valentina have gone.\u201d<\/p>\n People, all reluctant to give their names, said the community was a tight-knit one. \u201cEveryone looks out for each other,\u201d said one woman.<\/p>\n But they also agreed that there was a big problem with gangs of boys and young men involved in drug dealing and other crimes.<\/p>\n Tributes left to Natalie McDonald, 34, who died alongside her niece in a house fire. Photograph: Mark Pinder\/The Guardian<\/p>\n People felt trapped in their own homes, afraid to go to the shops, said the Middlesbrough<\/a> and Thornaby East MP, Andy McDonald. He called it a form of \u201cterrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n Jonathan Brash, the MP for Hartlepool, said communities felt organised crime was \u201cembedded\u201d.<\/p>\n There have been nine deaths and other possibly gang-related local crimes including a knife attack and the ramming of an empty house. On Thursday evening, video was shared on social media showing cars being torched at a vigil for one of the men who died in the A66 crash. It was in Haswell, County Durham, 20 miles north of the crash site.<\/p>\n The events of the last week have clearly left a community shellshocked and in need of help, fearful of what might happen next.<\/p>\n Alec Brown, the leader of Redcar and Cleveland council, said authorities were working \u201ctirelessly\u201d to ensure people feel safe. About 200 extra police from other forces have been drafted in<\/a> and some could be seen arriving at Cleveland\u2019s police headquarters on Friday morning.<\/p>\n The extra police are coming from the Northumbria, Durham, Humberside and North, South and West Yorkshire forces as well as the National Crime Agency. The hope is that a show of strength can dampen tensions and reassure the area.<\/p>\n Anna Turley, the MP for Redcar, said on Friday that not every incident police attended was connected to the investigation into organised crime.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really important to get across the fact that these incidents are not all linked,\u201d she said. \u201cIt could feel that way at the moment because of the national spotlight on us, but unfortunately, we know we\u2019ve had a high level of crime, and in this area for a long time now, these are incidents, sadly, that we see all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Terry Chapman with his dog Charlie. The vast majority of people in the area were \u2018absolutely fantastic\u2019, he said. Photograph: Mark Pinder\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Terry Chapman is not from Grangetown, but was \u201cborn and raised\u201d on a different Middlesbrough council estate.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t quite know why he had come to the site of the house blaze, but felt he had to. \u201cI know these areas, they are like where I\u2019m from,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have problems but when things happen like this \u2026 it\u2019s just hard to believe. It\u2019s really horrendous and scary.\u201d<\/p>\n Chapman said criminal gangsters were the minority. \u201cThe vast majority of people, including in places like Grangetown, are absolutely fantastic people.<\/p>\n \u201cThey may not have a lot. Some do. Some are managing and some are barely managing. But fundamentally, the majority of people are decent and they\u2019re law-abiding. The trouble is that the small minority seem to have a bigger influence in places like this and it\u2019s gone unchecked for years.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no obvious centre to Grangetown, with many shops shut. Photograph: Mark Pinder\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Grangetown and South Bank are clearly deprived, rundown areas. There are small terraces of shops, many shut, and no obvious centre.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also striking how few pubs there are. One former pub, the Magnet \u2013 which hosted early gigs for the Grangetown-born comedian Roy Chubby Brown \u2013 is now a branch of Heron Foods.<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s collision took place on the A66 between Church Lane and Normanby Road. Police had been pursuing a VW Passat with five young men in it for seven minutes before it turned on to the dual carriageway, against the flow of traffic. The pursuit was aborted. Ten seconds later the Passat crashed into a police car. Everyone died at the scene, including the police officers Matthew Blades and Tom Clough.<\/p>\n On the corner of Church Lane and the A66 a retired steelworker is looking desperately at the bouquets left for the PCs.<\/p>\n He\u2019s called Joe. \u201cI better not give you my surname, because of the lunatics \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Floral tributes at the junction of the A66 and Church Lane in Grangetown. Photograph: Mark Pinder\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The former steelworks, where most people in the area worked, was literally on the other side of the road, Joe said. \u201cI could be out of work and back home in 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n He is close to tears at what has happened in his community this week. \u201cThe problem is the police don\u2019t have the resources. There used to be a station in South Bank, there used to be a station in Eston. Now there\u2019s no police here and they [the criminal gangs] are doing whatever they like with drugs passing from one to another. They\u2019ve got away with it for years.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true that the problems in this part of Teesside are not isolated. Countless other places everywhere, not just the UK, have major problems with gangs and organised crime. You can watch versions of the problem on TV whenever you want, whether it\u2019s Naples, Baltimore or Liverpool.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see places like Grangetown and South Bank as postcards for forgotten England<\/a>, places tabloids sometimes say are controlled by feral gangs. But scratch the surface and there is light.<\/p>\n In South Bank on Normanby Road, near the A66 junction, is a community gallery set up by the Iraqi artist and Teesside University graduate Azad Karim Mohammed.<\/p>\n