Police forensic spray could catch nuisance bike riders as locals ‘too scared to go out’

Forensic spray could be deployed by police to tackle criminal or antisocial riders of electric bikes, Newport councillors have heard.

A senior police officer said Gwent Police was exploring the use of DNA spray to identify nuisance or illegal riders in the city, after hearing complaints residents in one ward were “too scared to go out after dark”.

Cllr Debbie Harvey, who represents the Alway ward, described a “nightmare” situation for a community plagued by antisocial behaviour – including the nuisance riding of off-road and electric bikes “all over the place and causing absolute mayhem”.

“Nothing seems to be fixing the problem,” she told a council meeting on Wednesday, adding: “We’ve got PCSOs out on the beat, we’ve got our local force, but nothing is fixing the fact people are too frightened to go out after 4.30pm.”

Cllr Harvey was speaking during a question and answer session with Chief Inspector Stevie Warden, of Gwent Police.

In response, he said the force was using modern technology to deal with “ever-developing” problems involving electric bikes.

“They are becoming cheaper, quicker and readily available,” he told the meeting, adding the bikes had previously been an issue in rural areas but have more recently become a tool for antisocial behaviour and to commit crimes elsewhere.

“We’ve had to change our approach [to] look at what we can do legally and what we can utilise with technology,” the chief inspector explained.

This work includes deploying drones to track bikes, and the force is also looking at reviving the use of DNA spray to “tag” and later track down riders.

According to the borough council in Watford, where a DNA spray pilot was launched last year, the spray “marks the bikes, clothing and skin of any riders and passengers with a uniquely coded but invisible dye that will provide irrefutable forensic evidence to link them to a specific crime”.

According to that report, the dye is “only detectable by UV light [and] remains on skin and clothing for several months after application”.

Separately, Cllr Stephen Cocks appealed for more work to tackle antisocial behaviour in his Caerleon ward.

He thanked a local PCSO for her “brilliant” work to tackle antisocial behaviour, but said “to be quite frank, at night there’s very little for youngsters to do” in Caerleon.

Teenagers “tend to congregate in extremely large numbers” around a Sainsbury’s shop and “cause considerable nuisance” for other people, he explained.

Cllr Cocks asked the chief inspector to “keep us in mind” when planning how to use resources around the Newport area.

Ch Insp Warden said officers were deployed “where they can be most effective”, but accepted Caerleon “does attract” antisocial behaviour.

“I want to give trust and confidence to people living in that community,” the officer added. “If it’s identified, [we] will go back and make sure we are putting the right things in place.”