Action on new kerb crawling hotspot

Land around West Bromwich Albion's home ground has become the latest Black Country hotspot for prostitution, police revealed today.

Police in the town are now carrying out round-the-clock patrols to combat kerb-crawling and growing numbers of prostitutes in the largely industrial area.

Up to 10 prostitutes have been seen operating in the area at day and night and are believed to have moved to the spot after being forced out of the Birmingham city limits by anti-social behaviour orders.

It is the first time the West Bromwich road policing unit has been forced to deal with the problem.

But officers have warned they will be staking out the area around Birmingham Road with marked and unmarked partrols and would be taking action against drivers suspected of soliciting and women working as prostitutes.

Pc Jason Dooley from the West Bromwich road policing unit said all the shifts were monitoring the situation 24 hours a day.

"It is a problem around there and we will be taking down registration plates and things like that," he said.

PC Dooley said they used to have a problem in Holyhead Road, Handsworth, just over the Sandwell border in Birmingham, but since a police crackdown the prostitutes had moved down the road and into the borough.

"We want people to know they are being watched and it is covert and overt operations so there could be plain-clothes police down there," he added.