London's knife-crime problem exposes larger social woes

In early July, London Mayor Sadiq Khan convened a knife crime summit at City Hall.

The reason: For the year to June 2018, the Metropolitan Police Service recorded 142 homicide cases, 88 of them knife-related. Compared to the previous year, homicides are up by 44 per cent, and knife crime offences by 21 per cent.

In the U.K., where firearms control is among the toughest in the world, gun offences make up only a small proportion of recorded crime.

The wave of violent crime in London has left politicians and police chiefs struggling to find answers and respond to public outrage, as well as headlines in tabloids claiming "police have lost control." A Labour MP said that the recent violence should be categorized as a "public health emergency."

The victims and perpetrators of knife crime are primarily black and other visible-minority teenagers. The recent surge in violence reminds 32-year-old Robyn Travis of his own youth in the London borough of Hackney in the late 1990s and early 2000s, during a previous spike in violence on the city's streets.

"It's not a new mindset," said Travis. "Whatever is happening today, it's just copying my age group. The reasons ain't going to be different."

Weapons as protection

Travis grew up in a single-parent family on a council estate that was locked in a rivalry with another estate. He was expelled from schools, got into fights and was stabbed for the first time when he was just 14. After that, he started carrying a knife.

Research often points to self-defence and protection as key reasons why young people carry knives.

"That's my reason," said Travis. "I didn't want to get hurt no more."

Travis first stabbed another boy when he was 15. There would be more stabbings after that, and he found himself on both ends of the knife. The scars across his body tell the story of a cycle of violence.

Close friends were killed, and others went to prison. By the age of 19, Travis was in prison in Jamaica for drug trafficking. He likens leaving prison to "reincarnation."

Travis now devotes himself to writing about the forces that led him down a path of criminality and violence. A lot of it is documented in his memoir,Prisoner to the Streets.

Travis also spends a lot of time going to schools and youth centres, meeting with young people in the hopes they won't make the same mistakes he did. He speaks about the vulnerability and lack of opportunity that characterizes a life of poverty, and how this fear can lead young people to seek status through violence.

And to reach for the knife.

No one 'has all the answers'

When Mayor Khan first unveiled his plan to tackle the problem in the capital in 2017, he emphasized that "no one person or organization has all the answers to knife crime." At the summit, the mayor placed part of the blame on the government.

"Together, we must ensure standards are maintained in every borough as part of our collective approach to tackling violence," said Khan, "because the government continues to leave us high and dry, by cutting public services and refusing to invest properly in our police service."

Since the Conservative government came to power in 2010, police budgets have been cut. Statistics released by the Home Office show the number of police officers fell from 143,734 in March 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017.

That represents the lowest number of police officers since comparable records were first made in 1996. Leaked Home Office documents also reveal that government cuts to police "may have encouraged" violent offenders and have "likely contributed" to a rise in serious violent crime.

The mayor has responded with a new violent crime taskforce of 150 officers that will focus solely on violent crime. The Met police has introduced targeted patrols with extra stop-and-search powers for those areas hit hardest by knife crime. Police statistics show that up until May this year, 920 knives hadbeen seized from London's streets, along with 98 firearms.

In one week in June, the taskforce carried out 615 weapons sweeps and seized six firearms and 135 knives.

Steve O'Connell, the Chairman of the Police and Crime Committee for the London Assembly, said that while the reasons for the recent violence are complex, police funding is a crucial issue.

"London remains a safe city, and the numbers are relatively low compared to other cities," O'Connell said.

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump told a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas that a "once very prestigious hospital" in London was like a "warzone" due to knife-attack victims. The exaggeration drew criticism in the British press. London's murder rate still remains lower than that of the 50 largest cities in the U.S.

Even so, O'Connell cautioned that "we are seeing in our town an increase in the number of men, particularly young men, willing to use a knife and guns to settle their differences."

Surrendering their weapons

Behind the Church of St John-at-Hackney, not far from where Travis grew up, is a large metal bin bolted into the concrete. It's a weapons surrender bin, one of 22 such receptacles located around London.

Since 2007, people have voluntarily dropped thousands of knives, guns and other weapons in these bins.

The amnesty bins are the brainchild of retired police constable Michael Smith, who was inspired to act by the increase in knife crime he witnessed during his time with the police.

"I've been to enough funerals of these young people. I've seen enough of the death," Smith said. "That's why I decided to do something about it in 2007."

While Smith believes that cuts in police funding have contributed to the recent swell of violence in the city, he also blames funding cuts for charities like the one he runs, Word 4 Weapons. Funding for youth and children services were also slashed in the post-2010 council budget cuts.

Smith hasn't received funding since 2012, which meant reducing the numbers of amnesty bins from 35 to 22. Cuts to his funding also meant ending the education workshops he used to run in schools.

Hackney has been one of the London boroughs hardest hit by cuts to the Metropolitan police budget since 2010 and in a potential sign of the effect, the amnesty bin behind St John-at-Hackney is one of the highest-producing ones in the city.

It is strategically located away from CCTV cameras, and when it is emptied every few months, they often find 300 to 500 knives in it.

In early April, a teenager named Israel Ogunsola was stabbed to death 500 metres from the bin. He was London's 55th murder victim of the year.

It frustratesSmith to know that a knife crime was committed so close to one of the bins.

"I'm saddened every time young people's lives are being lost," Smith said. "I want to know, and the people of London want to know: What are our leaders going to do about this?"