OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING
CITY POET LAYS THE BLAME FOR RECENT VIOLENCE ON YEARS OF NEGLECT AND INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
BRISTOL poet Lawrence Hoo believes institutional racism is the root cause of recent inner-city violence.
A man in his 30s is recovering in hospital from a critical condition after being stabbed multiple times in St Paul’s on Wednesday night.
It comes after Andre Gayle, 29, was fatally knifed near Easton Community Centre on Monday, August 31, following an Easton Road stabbing the day before.
Mr Hoo, a RISE award-winning poet who grew up in St Paul’s and Easton, believes recent violence is rooted in those communities being failed for decades.
He said: “I don’t trust police because they didn’t protect me or my community. My mum’s face was slashed when I was about seven years old, in 1975.
“We lived in Warwick Avenue just by the M32. She got out of the car to get something and she was slashed.
“I remember sitting on the step on the phone for hours and the police never came that night.
“They came the following day. They didn’t care. They never caught who did it.
“I remember that so vividly. I thought they would come to help. My mum’s face was scarred for the rest of her life.
“It’s been all our lives. They contained us, never protected us. This is about allowing children to keep their innocence.”
Safer Bristol Partnership found institutional racism in Avon and Somerset police and Bristol City Council in 2017, after Iranian refugee Bijan Ebrahimi was murdered and set alight on a Brislington estate, having reported racist abuse for years. Mr Hoo believes both the police and council must take responsibility for knife crime in St Paul’s and Easton, which he described as the “obvious outcome” of neglect.
He said: “Institutional racism equals our children dying. Everyone in this community is terrified of their children being murdered.
“Young men are growing up still believing they have no opportunities, and no access into society. They are young, angry and frustrated.”
Mr Hoo said there was a large police presence following the incident on Wednesday.
“I saw literally 10 to 15 police vehicles coming down, policemen with bulletproof face masks, full protective armour, big guns.
“That’s how much they’re frightened in St Paul’s – and they’re the police. How do they expect the children left to grow up in these environments to feel?
“When they come to these environments they feel like they’re going to war. That’s how they have always engaged with us.”
Mr Hoo, who has four sons aged from 13 to 28, fears for their safety in inner-city Bristol.
“Every day when my children leave the house, I fear for them. When Andre Gayle was murdered in Easton, my son was just by there a few minutes after that.
“My community is my family. Every time one goes it’s like we’re losing a child. We have lost too many children.
“People have grown up surrounded by fear, and having to defend themselves because the authorities don’t.
“They are penned in, not feeling safe to leave and move around in the system.
“The city is responsible for its creation. They cannot stand there and say ‘we are institutionally racist.’ When they say ‘institutional racism,’ I hear criminal negligence.
“Until we see a police chief being removed from his position in any police force that still comes forward and says it is institutionally racist, what will change?” Mr Hoo believes St Paul’s is “100 times safer” than in previous decades, but says violent attacks are continuing as the legacy of neglect.
Police logged 177 crimes, including 40 violent and sexual offences, across St Paul’s in July, the latest recorded month.
He said: “Generally, it’s not the St Paul’s that existed 10 years ago when it had been the South West’s drug and vice capital for nearly three decades.
“How has it gone from that to an affluent community in a few years? Authorities are now choosing to police a community how it should have always been policed.
“There is still the overspill from decades before. In the 2000s, you could buy as much crap as you wanted on the streets and there was violence every day.
“The men of today were seven, eight, nine years old then, and they
❝ My community is my family. Every time one goes it’s like we’re losing a child. We have lost too many children. Lawrence Hoo
were witnessing that. This is the hangover.”
The poet says for 30 years it was possible to stand on Grosvenor Road and sell drugs “for 24 hours a day”.
“How was that allowed to happen?” he asked. “That’s the Bristol authorities.
“When people go into St Paul’s now, the buildings have had work done, and the community appears to have been suddenly cleansed of all these ills.
“It’s a bit strange. The whole community is being redeveloped. They have made a lot of money out of our sorrow.”
What police say
Superintendent Andy Bennett said he agrees too many young people are losing their lives to knife crime.
He added: “It’s clear that across the country our black and minority ethnic (BAME) and disadvantaged communities are disproportionately suffering from these tragedies We all need to work together to build a fairer society where people have access to education, housing, healthcare and employment, and where people have confidence in their local police to serve, protect and respect.
“We welcome Mr Hoo’s recognition that the neighbourhood policing model and problem-solving approach of the last decade, working with the community, other agencies and voluntary organisations, has helped to improve the area.
“Avon and Somerset police are working hard to build a workforce which makes us representative of our diverse communities.
“We understand that we have a long way to go to build trust with communities whose elders have vivid memories of their experiences of discrimination but we’re committed to building those bridges.”
Across the force, 3.2 per cent of officers are BAME, up from 2.7 per cent in 2018.
In the senior leadership team of eight, there is one BAME employee, a director of strategy.
Black people were seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by Avon and Somerset police in the first quarter of 2020, down from nine times in the previous quarter.
A Lammy Review watchdog, which investigates racial bias in the criminal justice system, was set up for Avon and Somerset last year, the first outside London.
In June, Bristol City Council’s director of finance Denise Murray admitted there was “lots more work to do” to tackle institutional racism at City Hall. Bristol City Council was asked on Thursday morning for a response to Mr Hoo’s comments but had not provided one at the time publication.