Throughout the month of February, we’re telling the story of the 21 teenagers who were murdered in 2023. Our campaign, The 21, seeks to remember every victim as a young person with a family and their whole life ahead of them. We want to change the culture of kids carrying knives and becoming involved in violence.
On a Monday in May, Greenwich Council workers were called to what appeared to be a routine nuisance noise complaint in Woolwich Arsenal.
But when they arrived, they were confronted by an individual carrying a large knife.
Before long, the address was swarming with police - there had been a stabbing.
Council workers had just survived a brush with the borough’s mushrooming knife violence problem.
The shocking incident was reported to the council’s Community Safety and Environment Scrutiny Panel in June.
But since then, knife crime has not appeared on the committee’s agenda.
Three south London boroughs - Greenwich, Bexley and Croydon - have all seen unusually high increases in violent knife crime – but there is little evidence that councils are treating the issue with any urgency.
While investigating and solving crimes is the job of police, councils traditionally monitor crime and hold police to account, keeping the pressure on over matters of concern in the community.
But committees in these three south London boroughs are either failing to acknowledge the problem or failing to publish evidence of what they’re doing.
“They’re not fit for purpose,” said Gwenton Sloley, a government advisor who trains police, councils and other agencies on how to steer young people away from crime.
He has worked with Met Police officers investigating south London gangs and runs Crying Sons, helping agencies “to reach previously perceived unreachable young people”.
“They’re more interested in trying to be friendly with the police to get funding,” he said of councils.
“Nobody really holds the police to account anymore because they’re too busy working with the police to draw down joint money together.”
Overall knife crime in Greenwich is up 21.2 per cent year-on-year, according to Met Police data (year to October 2023) – substantially higher than the increase across London generally (14.5 per cent).
But statistics on the number of young people sustaining knife wounds are even more alarming.
The Met counts anybody aged 24 or under as a young person.
Between November 2022 and October 2023, 62 young people in Greenwich suffered knife injuries in non-domestic crimes.
The previous year, it was 47. That is an increase of 32 per cent.
The London-wide increase is eight per cent.
These are small numbers compared with Greenwich’s population – but such an unusually high increase is nonetheless of concern.
The Met Police has taken to stencilling the pavement with warnings to residents to “remain vigilant”.
It has also stationed dedicated teams in town centre to tackle “serious youth violence and robbery”. High visibility patrols have reduced personal robberies by 16 per cent, it claimed.
Ann-Marie Cousins, the council’s cabinet member for community safety, insisted the council was doing everything it could to help tackle the problem.
“Greenwich is not alone in feeling the shattering impact of knife crime and serious violence,” she said.
“This is a complex problem to solve, and government funding cuts of £10m over the last ten years does not help us tackle the issue at hand.”
It’s not just Greenwich. Other London boroughs are seeing unusually high increases in young people injured by knives.
In Croydon, young people sustaining knife wounds in non-domestic crimes rose 21%, from 70 in a year to 85.
Among the victims was 15-year-old Elianne Andam, whose tragic death made national headlines.
Elianne was fatally stabbed on her way to the Old Palace of John Whitgift School on a Wednesday morning in September.
When Croydon Council staff conducted online test purchases of knives from local businesses, it found security checks at 17 of them were so lax that it prosecuted them.
It is now offering free training to businesses which sell knives.
The borough has a Safer Neighbourhood Board, but according to the council’s website it last met in November 2019.
Croydon’s press office claimed the board had not been disbanded and had met as recently as September 2023.
Asked why there were no online records of any meetings since 2019, it did not answer.
The council claimed the board was the responsibility of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC).
We asked MOPAC where the missing agendas and minutes were. It didn’t answer.
The council also said it held an annual “scrutiny session on crime and disorder, which looks at how all statutory bodies in the borough work to make Croydon safer”.
Asked when the last session was held and whether it could provide the minutes, it didn’t answer.
The Met isn’t stencilling pavements in Croydon but, as in Greenwich, it has installed dedicated teams in town centres to tackle serious youth violence and says high visibility patrols have seen personal robberies drop by 17%.
Meanwhile, in Bexley, young people suffering knife wounds in non-domestic crimes rose from 19 in a year to 30.
That is a 47% increase – almost six times the rate of increase across London as a whole.
As the number was small to begin with, even a small increase could have looked like a large percentage – but it is still a worrying upward trend.
Democratic scrutiny of crime in Bexley is supposed to be provided by its Places Oversight and Scrutiny Committee.
But online records show knife crime has not appeared on its agendas at all since before the May elections, nor is there any mention of it in the committee’s latest work plan.
The borough’s cabinet member for community safety is Sue Gower. We sent her several questions via the council’s press office, but it would only provide answers from an anonymous spokesperson, who suggested the problem was stemming from elsewhere.
Factors driving Bexley’s increase, they said, included “displacement of crime from other boroughs, cross-borough gang activity, the placement of young people into the borough who may already be a victim or perpetrator of youth violence, and an increase in child criminal exploitation.”
But while knife injuries are rising faster among Bexley’s young population than the London-wide trend, the council stressed that the number of crimes remained lower than the London average.
Nonetheless, it said: “Any amount of knife injuries is one too many and we as a partnership are doing all we can to reduce these figures.”
We asked the Met Police why it thought knife crime might be rising unusually quickly in Croydon, Bexley and Greenwich.
It did not answer, but said: “We continue to dedicate large-scale resources into tackling violence, preventing homicides, catching those responsible, bringing justice to victims’ families, while also taking weapons off our streets.
“There are policing operations tailored to each individual area across London, taking into account the local needs and concerns of the community.
“Officers have been deployed into known violent hotspot locations, using innovative techniques and conducting high visibility patrols to keep London safe.”
Mr Sloley believes meaningful scrutiny would reveal that the majority of young people committing knife crimes have got problems, and their crimes could be averted with appropriate early intervention.
“From my personal experience, a lot of them have either already got an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) or undiagnosed forms of autism,” he said.
“You will know the ones that are doing the stabbings because they are the ones that have been excluded from school and are roaming the streets. So we need to better fund mental health services.”
The Met says it is “working with our partners to help divert young people away from a life of criminality.”
In September, Greenwich Council launched a campaign called: “Let’s Live #KnifeFree”.
The scheme included outdoor and online advertisements, a specially commissioned short film and a website, all encouraging young people to seek careers advice and apprenticeships.
Its aim was “to inspire young people and adults to remember the value of the life not yet lived”.
“We are in the process of delivering amnesty bins across the borough so people can physically ‘drop the knife’, live their life and not suffer the consequence of carrying a knife,” said Cllr Cousins.
The campaign was backed by Hawa Haragakiza, whose 15-year-old son Tamim Ian Habimana was stabbed to death in Woolwich in 2021.
“This campaign is needed so we can save lives and put an end to knife crime once and for all,” she said.
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