POLICE chiefs this week asked The Citizen to supply them with the dossier on sleaze and drunken, loutish behaviour in Blackpool which we have compiled.

Chief Inspector Mark Bartlett contacted us regarding all our reports and readers' letters over the past month during our "No Sleaze Please" campaign to take to a meeting with Town Hall bosses.

As a result a leading councillor said that they could be seeking more powers to combat drinking on the streets.

The Citizen highlighted the resort's decline in a series of recent front page articles.

Our investigations revealed:

GANGS drinking alcohol from bottles in the streets.

GIRLS bearing their breasts for cameras on a Pleasure Beach ride.

MEN urinating in the street.

MISSILES being thrown from passing cars.

LITTER-STREWN pavements throughout the town centre.

Chief Supt Dick Taylor attended the meeting with council leader George Bancroft, deputy leader Roy Fisher and chief executive Graham Essex-Crosby to discuss what could be done to clean up the town's image.

Coun Bancroft, pictured here, has admitted there was a problem with stag and hen parties who came to the town at weekends and he was investigating the legality of some of the lewd souvenirs on sale in the resort's shops. Letters flooded in, every one in agreement that the town had fallen into decline. They thought there was a lack of bobbies on the beat and identified clamping down on culprits who behaved in an anti-social way.

But so far the police have opted for a soft approach, teaming up with the town's traders to educate visitors and prevent bad behaviour, rather than operate a "zero tolerance" policy.

Yesterday's meeting (August 30) was a general discussion about policing and where the problem areas in the town were, using evidence supplied by the readers of The Citizen.

Coun Fisher said the council departments and the police were working together to combat drinking on the streets.

He said they were in the early stages of considering a drink confiscation policy that currently operated successfully in Glasgow, where offenders had their bottles of alcohol taken off them and poured down the drain.

He said: "The chief superintendent is contacting officers in Glasgow and looking into the legal requirements of this method. We may have to amend our by-laws to enable us to enforce it, but I think that can be done quite easily," said Coun Fisher, who is considering visiting the Scottish city to see the confiscation policy in operation.

"Trading standards officers and police enforcement officers have been out on the streets to have a look at what is going on. I think we already have a pretty safe family resort but we don't want the situation to become any worse," he said.