\n<\/p>\n
All but one of the residents who speak to us do so on the condition of anonymity. They are worried that showing their faces could place them or their homes at risk.<\/p>\n
What message do the attacks send to people on this street, I ask one.<\/p>\n
“Well, they should be scared, shouldn’t they, that something’s going to happen to their property if they say anything or get involved. So we don’t.”<\/p>\n
Victoria, who moved here several years ago, says the escalating violence cannot be separated from the wider condition of the town.<\/p>\n
“This is a social problem, especially in this area. Teesside has been massively neglected and ignored,” she says.<\/p>\n
The attack in Acklam is far from Middlesbrough’s only recent case of a vehicle being used as a weapon. Back in May, a tractor was driven into a house on Priory Road, and since the A66 crash Cleveland Police has investigated at least two further rammings.<\/p>\n
Detectives have also linked their wider investigation to a caravan fire on Attlee Road in Grangetown.<\/p>\n
“It’s getting worse,” a nearby resident says. “They’re always balaclava-ed up as well, do you know what I mean?”<\/p>\n
He blames drugs.<\/p>\n
“It can’t be anything else. Why would you be like you are unless it was drugs?” he says.<\/p>\n
Whether every incident is part of a single feud has not been established. But taken together, the rammings, fires and arrests have created a powerful sense that violence is being used to intimidate, punish and send messages.<\/p>\n
What is most unsettling for these residents is the sense that nobody is fully in control.<\/p>\n
Grangetown and South Bank are communities still living with the void left by the decline of heavy industry. Both now rank among England’s most deprived neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
In South Bank, we see a group of teenagers tend three ponies tethered on the grass. Two perform wheelies on electric scooters while another uses a long stick to scatter rubbish.<\/p>\n
On the adjoining estate, more than a dozen homes have boarded-up windows.<\/p>\n
On a wall are the words “RIP 2UZZI”, said locally to have been the nickname of Jakub Matusiak, who lived one street away.<\/p>\n
One 17-year-old boy tells us he knew him. “He was my best mate,” he says. “It’s sad.”<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, three letters are repeated: “FTP” – an expletive directed at the police.<\/p>\n
I ask the teenager if he would call the police if another young person approached him carrying a knife.<\/p>\n
“No,” he says. Before adding: “I’ve never needed the police in my life. I’d rather die than ring the police.”<\/p>\n
Again and again, the young people we speak to express a profound distrust of the police.<\/p>\n
Cleveland’s Chief Constable Victoria Fuller said what we’d heard was “horrifying”.<\/p>\n
“Yes, there are a small minority of people in the Grangetown area who blight those communities. But we will continue relentlessly to serve our communities.”<\/p>\n
The scale of the challenge facing the force and the community it serves is not new.<\/p>\n
The area has some of the highest police-recorded crime rates in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
Its leaders have been warning for years that its resources did not match the demands placed upon it.<\/p>\n
But recent inspections show Cleveland is one of the most improved forces in England and Wales, with performance levels also judged to be some of the best in the country.<\/p>\n
The force has recently arrested 87 people for offences linked to organised crime gangs and over the past two years 16 people have been jailed for such crimes.<\/p>\n
Since the crash, more than 200 additional officers have been deployed in Middlesbrough and surrounding communities. Their immediate task is to suppress the violence and identify those directing it.<\/p>\n
There is also the question of restoring order and rebuilding trust and confidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n