Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Singer calls for Met chief to go as pandemic threatens a surge in youth violence
FOR singer Jermain Jackman, this year marks a turning point. In November, his friend Dylon was stabbed at a party, later dying in hospital.
Last weekend would have been Dylon’s 25th birthday. “I celebrated his birthday with friends and family,” Jermain says. “He would have been the same age as me. It’s had a huge impact on me. I didn’t realise how much at first.”
Jermain has campaigned on youth violence since losing school friend Isaiah Ekpaloba to a knife attack months after winning ITV talent show, The Voice, in 2014.
“But this is a turning point,” he says. “I have lost so many friends now. I have to turn anger into action.”
Yesterday, Jermain chaired a Uk-wide video meeting of over 1,000 young people to discuss the new Youth Violence Commission report by MPS – hearing a torrent of fears for the future.
The report – which promotes a “public health approach” to tackling youth violence – is even more urgent since the Covid-19 emergency. Lockdown has exacerbated almost everything the report identifies as preconditions for a surge in violence.
The MP who set up the YVC after seeing a string of young people killed in her Lewisham Deptford constituency is no less worried.
Vicky Foxcroft says: “We know from the report that domestic violence, poverty, inequality, bad housing, cuts to youth funding, gaps in education are all factors,.
“This has all got worse in the last weeks. We can’t ignore that being at home for some young people has been more dangerous than Covid-19.”
The report warns that funding for youth services and Violence Reduction Units in the UK is threatened by postpandemic austerity cuts.
Meanwhile, commission advisers also flagged up the deteriorating relationship between the police and
BAME communities during lockdown.
“There were over 22,000 stop and searches of black men between March and May,” Jermain says. “Over 80% led to no further action. “Yet Police Commissioner Cressida Dick recently said the Met is no longer institutionally racist. I’m calling on her to resign. “I honestly believe if she stays in her position, we can expect to see another uprising on our hands.” Jermain speaks from personal experience. “How many times have I been stopped and searched? How many times have you found pennies in your pocket? I’ve lost count. It’s just part of my life.
“The first time I was stopped and searched, I was in my school uniform. I was pushed up against a shop window and asked: ‘What have you got on you?’
Nothing. The officer said: ‘I like to give you people a chance, so I’ll ask again…’
“The second time, I was getting a Mcdonald’s after college. There was something going on, so I walked past, and an officer grabbed me. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said. One of the boys they were arresting had to tell them, ‘he’s not actually with us’.
“Why did they think I was? Because of the colour of my skin. It’s making me emotional because this is the experience of so many black and brown people in London.”
After apologising to Team GB sprinter Bianca Williams for a stop and search that saw her dragged and handcuffed in front of her child, Dame Cressida told MPS last week: “I don’t think we’re collectively failing.
“I don’t think [racism] is a massive systemic problem, I don’t think it’s institutionalised, and more to the point I think we have come such a very, very, very long way.” Gary Trowsdale, lead adviser to the Commission and former MD of the Damilola Taylor Trust, says he’s seen “disproportionate targeting of the black community lead to the worst community-police relations since the 1980s.
“This is just as the poorest communities are coming to terms with the death toll affecting them worse than others. Hospital cleaners, porters and bus drivers are the families and neighbours of the kids being stopped and search day in, day out.”
Jermain adds: “Covid has discriminated – not the virus itself, but the way it behaved, the way it exploited structural racism.”
The cross-party MPS’ report looks at youth violence as a disease, building on a model successfully pioneered in Scotland. The murder rate in Glasgow dropped dramatically when police started to treat communities with compassion, and to treat the causes of the epidemic. It also cost the public purse far less.
In the wake of Covid-19, Vicky Foxcroft sees a chance for change. “Coronavirus shows we can react to a public health emergency when we want to,” she says. She was unable to attend Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday as she is shielding, so the report was raised by neighbouring MP Helen Hayes, who lost a teenage constituent last week to a knife attack.
Boris Johnson’s response was a knee-jerk call for more stop and search. Even so, Jermain also believes in new beginnings. “Covid has given us the opportunity to turn the corner to a new approach – to reimagine, reform, rethink,” he says. “This report is a starting point for that.”
I have lost so many friends now. I have to turn anger into action