| Violent crime, drugs offences, petty theft and vandalism have been shown to be rife. So, what is life like for those in the area now, many of whom still seem to have a strong allegiance to the troubled community?
The Tele sent reporters Brian Smith, Debbie Kerr and photographer Gordon Robbie to take a close look at the hill and its environment to see if things really are as bad as painted by the police statistics.
They found plenty of evidence to back up the view that an entrenched drug problem is playing a major role in the Hilltown’s difficulties — along with a resolute refusal by many local people to write off a part of the city that generations of the same family have been pleased to call home.
DUNDEE’S HILLTOWN is a place that is changing — just not always for the better (writes Brian Smith).
Yes, there are the neat little new developments with their tidy, well-kept gardens, if you go looking for them.
But it is just as easy to find the well-worn tracks to the local drug dens, marked out with the thrown away junk heroin habits leave behind.
The lasting impression of the place is of somewhere that has had its heart torn out.
In the middle of the afternoon there are very few people about. Blocks of flats are empty and silent and there are stretches of shops that haven’t seen a customer in years.
On a bright and blustery day, even the islands of green space that have been planted on the hill are not exactly thronging with mums and toddlers or old folk taking the chance of a seat on a bench and some sunshine.
Go round the back of the Alexander Street multis and you have a much more usual picture.
Windows are bricked or boarded up, gardens hang from the gutters they are so overgrown, walls are covered in graffiti and paint peels and flakes from the railings.
The silence at the centre of the city is only broken when three youths pick their way down the steps and start shouting gang slogans.
Heavy gates have been put up nearby to prevent access to waste ground and a derelict building, its windows burned out and smoke blackened from a spate of fires.
Coping stones hauled off the top of a wall and used for a makeshift set of steps just round the corner show the run down house is still a regular destination.
Walk round the multis at the foot of the Hilltown and there is a constant sense of your every move being watched.
Round the back of Dalfield Court there is ample evidence that it is a regular haunt of drug users from the syringe caps, pans and powder packets that lie against the base of the building.
Along the Hilltown itself, there can be up to half-a-dozen unoccupied shops in a line. Even in those that are open, heavy grilles stay in place all day.
Long-time residents still loyally defend the Hilltown, insisting, “It is not as bad as they make it out to be”.
Jack Wemyss, reacting to the news that the Hilltown is the area with the highest crime rate, said, “There are a lot of good people in the Hilltown.
“OK, you have to keep an eye on it, but you have to keep an eye on every part of Dundee.
“It was not fair for them to write that.”
Jeweller William Hastie, in the same shop for 44 years, said, “We have never had any trouble and you would find that for most of the shopkeepers.
“If it was going to be as bad as that, we would not have been able to stay here.
“You see people going up and down, shouting at each other, but they do that in the High Street.
“They have moved a lot of people out and that has been detrimental to the area, detrimental to business. We need people back in the area.”
Newer residents tell a different story of large-scale drug and alcohol abuse, but they are reluctant to speak about what they see.
They tell of children out in the streets in the early hours of the morning and adults incapable of taking care of themselves.
For them, the levels of crime come as no surprise. |
