IT LOOKS like an innocent prank played by Cheltenham schoolchildren - but residents fear trainers hanging from telephone lines have a far more sinister meaning.

They say the dangling footwear is used by drug dealers to mark their territory in St Paul's and Whaddon - and they are urging police to investigate.

At a meeting with the Whaddon Safer Community Team this week, they said the sinister signals showed the town was being influenced by gangland culture.

Police moved quickly to allay the fears, saying the trend might suggest drug-related activity in many parts of the UK, but that it isn't necessarily the case in Cheltenham.

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Addressing the meeting, a pensioner who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "You see shoes tied to telephone wires all over town nowadays.

"It makes me concerned because it is well known that drug dealers use it as a way of marking out their patches.

"I take it as a sign that the town is becoming more territorial. Wherever I see the shoes I think 'I wouldn't want to go down there'."

Trainers can be seen hanging from telephone wires in St Paul's Road, Tommy Taylor's Lane, Malvern Street and Elm Street, which are all within walking distance of each other.

Another pensioner, who lives near St Paul's, said she was certain the shoes were linked to criminal activity.

"Drugs are rife here," she said. "I see people dealing on the street outside my home and coming in and out of certain flats. The shoes are a sign that drugs are available. Everyone knows what they are up to."

But Daud McDonald, a member of St Paul's Residents' Association, said the fears were exaggerated.

"We used to have a problem several years ago," he said. "Now there's a bit of cannabis going around, but that's it. In terms of hard drugs there is not an issue. The trainers up on the telephone wires Wholesale Tungsten Rings are just students messing around. It's nothing sinister."

Inspector Roddy Gosden of Gloucestershire police said the phenomenon of "shoe flinging" could mean a number of different things.

"It could just be kids larking around," he said. "Another possibility which has been heard of is that they are boundary lines for drug dealers.

"But we have had no intelligence to suggest this is the case in Whaddon or St Paul's or that we have a particular issue with drug gangs."

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Tony France, drugs and alcohol lead for the county council's health and wellbeing team, said: "It's something that started over in America when gangs would take the shoes of people who had been shot and throw them up," he said.

"In Cheltenham, just like other towns, there is a drugs culture. It has changed a lot over the last five years. Whereas pills and amphetamines used to be in high demand, now it's cannabis and cocaine. But as far as shoes on telephone wires go, it is all done for show."

Removal of shoes falls under the remit of British Telecom who use cherry pickers to reach them. A spokesman said they don't make the issue a priority unless it interferes with the line.

OPINION, P8