VIDEO: Pensioner issues heartfelt plea over drug abuse in Chesterfield

The man - who did not want to be named - got into an argument with a female PCSO on New Beetwell Street this morning after two men had been found collapsed under the bus shelters.

He told her he was angry about the police response to a problem which he said had been going on for decades, but she ended the conversation after unsuccessfully attempting to get him to lower his voice.

Another member of the public sprang the PCSO’s defence, saying the problems were ‘not her fault’ and that he should ‘leave her alone’.

However, the PCSO later admitted that as the only member of staff within the Chesterfield 'SNT' policing team, she was unable to either request that the group move along or search them for illegal drugs.

The man, who was in his 70s and had lived in the town ‘all his life’, said: “The people of Chesterfield are absolutely fed up to the back teeth of these lowlifes frequenting bus stations and intimidating people and it is time something was done about it.

“It has been going on for 15, 20 years and nothing ever gets done.

“It affects everybody in the town from teenagers, to old people, to me - I have to sit listening to these people effing and blinding and falling out and I am not prepared to keep putting up with it.

“What am I paying my rates and police dues for?

“With the police it’s the same old story, they don’t do anything and it takes them years and years.

“They do absolutely nothing but we just keep paying their wages don’t we?

“You think they are going to do something about it, you put a little piece in the paper and it is all forgotten again.

“She says to me don’t raise your voice but what else can you do but raise your voice when you are fed up with society as it is.

“It has got a little bit better over the last three of four months since they moved them all on but it has been going on for 20 years not just 20 months.

“It takes years and years and years for them to do anything about it.

“They have only got to walk about same as I do to see all these lowlifes and what they are doing.

“We should not have to be putting up with it.

“I go down to Hampshire on a regular basis they don’t put up with it in their town - they clear them all off.

“And that’s what we should be doing in Chesterfield.”

We have asked for a comment from Derbyshire police and will include it as and when we get it.