Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said that winning back the trust and confidence of the public in relation to policing is an important factor in lowering the amount of violent crime.

Today he announced his Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is to invest a further £9 million into a community-led programme, MyEnds.

The scheme’s goal is to tackle violence and deliver positive opportunities for young people.

The Mayor has said that crime reduction and increased confidence in the police force “go hand in hand.”

Sadiq exclusively told Newsquest South London: “Firstly, we got to recognise that it affects all of us if some communities don't have trust in the police.

“If the public doesn’t have the confidence to report crime, be a witness or join the police service, all of us are affected because the bad guy gets away and commits further criminal offences and so forth.

“The reality is over the last few years, trust and confidence from minority communities have gone down along with trust and confidence from women and girls - that's a problem.

“The previous Commissioner didn't get that, and she didn't understand how to address the issues, including cultural issues, sexism, racism, misogyny and homophobia.

“That's one of the reasons why I lost confidence in her.

“We've now pointed a new commissioner for Sir Mark Riley, who does get it.

“He's got a plan to address these issues and he will be a reforming commissioner.

“You can't police successfully without winning back the trust and confidence of the public and it's really important we do so.

“The more trust and confidence we have, the less crime we are going to have and it is really important for the two to go together hand in hand.”

The MyEnds scheme provides support and funding for communities to deliver interventions in neighbourhoods affected that are by high and sustained levels of violence.

The Mayor describes the concept as a “public health approach” which takes a focus on the prevention of violent crime.

The eight areas of London involved in MyEnds include Brent, Croydon, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Newham, Southwark and Tower Hamlets.

These areas will see £9million invested in communities and neighbourhoods over the next three years.

MyEnds was first launched back in 2021 and the Mayor says the newly announced funding will allow the violence reduction unit to build on the first year of the programme.

Today, the Mayor visited the MyEnds group in Lambeth which is currently working with communities on the Angell Town, Loughborough and Moorlands estates.

Your Local Guardian: the ML Community Enterprise, which delivers programmes, youth work and mentoring at the Marcus Lipton Youth Club in Brixton.the ML Community Enterprise, which delivers programmes, youth work and mentoring at the Marcus Lipton Youth Club in Brixton.

Sadiq said: “We've got statistics and data on which the areas of London where there's not just the greatest deprivation policy, unemployment, lack of opportunities - they also coincide with those areas with this high violent crime.

“The idea of MyEnds is to give young people in these communities a helping hand to fill their potential and to ensure they're not inadvertently driven into the hands of criminal gangs, but instead have constructive things to do.

“Already at the after the first year of our interventions and our mentoring and activities has led to crime going down these areas which is great news.”

When asked about violence against women and girls, after safety concerns have been on the forefront of the south Londoner's minds following the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, the Mayor explained that he is trying to tackle violence against women and girls at its root.

This includes interventions in schools and teaching young people about respect, as well as further enforcement action.

Sadiq said: “We are working with the police to target known perpetrators.

“So, we're doing GPS tagging of those who have been released who have been convicted of domestic abuse.

“We've got a predatory unit in every single basic command unit targeting known stalkers.

“We're also lobbying the government to make misogyny a hate crime, but also to make some offences like harassment in the public place a criminal offence.

“We have launched a huge campaign would “have a word” targeting the behaviour of men to reflect our behaviour that can lead to things we think is banter but can be sexism, leading to misogyny, leading to inappropriate words, leading to abuse, leading to violence.

“So, we have to have that ‘public health’ approach for violence against women and girls, just like we did with youth violence.”

 

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