Families quiz gang tsar as our summit warns of blades peril
VICTIMS’ families quizzed a leading MP, Britain’s top gang cop and senior campaigners at a pioneering Drop the Knife summit run by Crimestoppers and the Sunday Mirror.
Det Supt Kevin Southworth, who heads the Met Police’s Trident gang unit, told an audience in Streatham, South London, that more than 14,000 arrests were made in an operation to combat child mobs.
But he admitted there had been a spike of attacks over the past 18 months, adding: “There is an increased propensity for violence. We can’t arrest our way out of the situation.”
Labour’s Chuka Umunna, the local MP, said: “We have an emergency, a crisis. This problem is real and it doesn’t get nearly enough attention.”
Junior Smart, who turned his life around after he got 12 years for having crack cocaine, said funding is vital. He runs the SOS Gangs Project and said: “One of our workers spent 80 hours with a single family, but cost is an issue. We are putting a price on young people’s lives.”
Sheldon Thomas, a former Yardie who has advised the Government on gang crime, said: “The absence of fathers is the most significant factor in gang violence. I’ve engaged with over 7,000 gang members, 77 per cent had no fathers. They find the wrong role models.”
And Dr Emer Sutherland, the clinical lead for emergency surgery at Kings College Hospital, said: “’I’ve had to tell three women their son is dead, killed by a knife. I still see their faces. That will never leave me.”
A lad of 15 was knifed in a local park a day before our summit. He was in a stable condition.