I live at the front line of knife crime – and it’s terrifying
ast autumn, I wrote in these pages how my 15-year-old was mugged at knifepoint around dusk. They frisked her, took her phone and sent her on her way, threatening to stab her with the serrated blade if she turned around or paused.
I spoke of how knife crime seemed so remote, so underworld, until it touches those you love. I called for action, the way you do; something must be done to combat the growing lawlessness in London, I asserted. To no effect.
My daughter recovered her equilibrium much faster than I did. She was born and bred in Hackney, shrugged it off as just one of those things, returned to her routine as I fussed about her safety.
But there is nothing routine about the horrific crime wave taking place in the streets where I live, work, walk. London was this week described as being more dangerous than New York, having overtaken the murder rate in the US city; 55 people have lost their lives so far here this year.
Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has announced a new task force of 120 officers to focus on the city’s most violent gang members and individuals in known crime hotspots. I can show her a few.
Today, it’s the area by my child’s secondary school that has been declared a crime scene after a 53-yearold man died on Wednesday in broad daylight following a violent altercation outside the bookies.
The street, just past our big Tesco, has been cordoned off after an 18-year-old was stabbed to death there; his last moments spent staggering towards police officers on patrol. His 15-year-old friend survived his stab wounds. Does that make him lucky?
Last Thursday, a 16-year-old boy was shot in the face in Walthamstow, where my sister and her family live.
And a 17-year-old girl was slain at random in a drive-by shooting in Tottenham, just past Spurs’s White Hart Lane stadium, where our friends are season ticket holders.
I could draw a map of these locations, so familiar are they to me. But now they are frightening testaments to turf wars being fought the length and breadth of Britain.
David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, where four people have died since January, has spoken about the need to tackle the £11billion cocaine drugs trade that is at the heart of these postcode vendettas.
We are the drugs market of Europe, and our cities are being carved up by dealers, who defend their patches with the knee jerk ultra-violence of a computer game.
Why use fists when you can use knives? Who wants the mess of close combat with a knife when you can just fire a gun from a car; mete out punishment from afar?
It sounds like a particularly bleak US TV show, doesn’t it? One beset with clichés; mostly black kids killing other black kids, listening to the ominous, bleak strains of drill music, a dark subgenre that glorifies urban nihilism, shooters and squalid drug deals.
My daughter has a theory that music is helping to lead teenage boys of every race down the path of gang warfare. As the heavy beats thump out from parked cars and open windows, it stirs up anxiety.
But to my ear, it’s a symptom, the sociopathic soundtrack of anger against the real or perceived enemy.
On the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Martin Griffiths, the lead surgeon for trauma at Barts Health Trust, spoke with great humanity and urgent eloquence about how injuries are now of greater severity and both victims and assailants are getting younger.
“Some of my military colleagues have described being here as similar to being at Camp Bastion, which is a very worrying comment,” he said.
“We are doing major interventions on younger and younger patients. We routinely have children in school uniforms coming in with knife and gun wounds.”
He talked about a normalisation of violence combined with a willingness to take offence so that even the most minor incident leads to bloodshed.
Things have changed a lot since Damilola Taylor’s killing shocked the nation in 2000. Almost 18 years on, we have become inured to stabbings and killings because we expect them.
And, truthfully, it’s only when they threaten our quiet lives that we become concerned, alarmed, outraged. I hold my hands up.
I applaud Scotland Yard’s top officer for her declaration of war against criminals, but coming down hard on the perpetrators is only half the battle.
Young kids from socially deprived areas need positive role models, more and improved mentorship and early intervention. If they have hope in their personal future, they won’t turn to gangs as a twisted surrogate family.
And what about the middle-class kids and professional adults buying drugs via Snapchat and Whatsapp every weekend with the casual nonchalance of a Deliveroo order?
As that young lad on a bike, hoodie pulled down over his face, mounts the pavement to do the deal, armed with a knife just in case, let nobody kid themselves that drug use is a victimless crime.
I leave you with the words of Mr Griffiths, who deals with the terrible consequences every day: “You get the society you deserve. If you ignore violence and offending as a member of the public, your society will change. We are all responsible for what is happening to our society right now.”