Knife Crime UK - Reportage

...And another teenager is murdered in London...".

The news alone is enough to make you feel physically ill, and somehow the reporting of it, perhaps, the wording also instills a sense of unease.

Is there any other way this can be reported sans dramatic voice?

Meanwhile politicians, idiotically play the crassest of "pass the problem". They clearly have no idea.

In South Africa, while reporting there in 92, a good friend of mine who lived to tell the tale - he's now at MSF - got stabbed near the heart.

He says he saw it coming, walking down an alley in the early morning in downtown joburg as two men closed in on him either side

There was a time, I can't speak for now (limited knowledge) when South African friends would lament the value of life.

There were, still are, car jackings, muggings, gun crimes.

Crime South Africa
On one occasion listening to 702 - a popular radio station - jackers had made off with a mini bus with a baby inside.

While driving around with a radio exec in Soweto, he showed me his hand piece which a couple of days earlier he'd shot and fatally wounded a car jacker after his car.

At the police station, the duty Sergeant dismissed him saying the day he empties two whole clips he'd have something to answer for. The exec let off 6 rounds.

What happens when young people have little regard for their own lives, let alone those they resent or have no relationship with.

Well-off South Africans took to erecting fortresses e.g. Four ways; whole streets have become small self contained towns cordoned off by security check points determining who enters.



Controversially will anyone of note in the UK say the knife/gun culture has no solution?

That a generation 'Don't ****ing cares" has taken root. And that the best MPs and others can do is to follow South Africa's example.

Otherwise make a lot of huffaw, hoping the following day, bad news of a kind they have an inkling to talk about will arrive e.g. stamp duty.

Course not, but some solutions seem blindingly obvious at least in addressing a symptom that leads to some youngsters losing their way.


Youth Crime Action Plan

In 1992 under a tory government the perception of crime appears to have as much resonance then as it does now.

A friend's son fell by the side, despite being a model student. Stacey worked two jobs to get her son into a good school.

In part she has to from a government that taxes through the nose.

She gets home at 6.30. Her son finishes school at 3.30. There's no such thing as a latch key kid anymore because after school he doesn't come home, he's on the streets with new friends in the rough and tumble of youth culture developing his badness.

He gets home around 7pm.

Couple of months back I visited him at Feltham's Young Offenders prison. He was in good spirit and this time had picked up new fashion statements - a full fro with a three combs in his hair.

Bravado continues inside and as many of the youngsters will tell you prison holds no fear for them.

What's it like here, I asked
Ol right- food sucks though, he answered.

So what if the government underwent a real paradigm and shifted the closing of schools to a later time.

What if 3.30 became 5.30 where youngsters could do post curricula things. Football - now there's an idea!

Yes yes it's not going to reform those who just don't want to be in school in the first place, but it might do something to stem the feral nature of learning how to be "bad".

Don't be silly, do you know how much that would cost?

Not half as much rhetorically as paying for young people who stray into lawlessness, ending up in prison and costing the government a fair whack each week.

Or otherwise what about making it possible for parents to be at home around 3.30 when their young uns leave school.

Yep you're saying that's barking as well. Just think of the productivity we lose in economic value.

But why do we have to work till 5.30? What's the lesser of the trade offs? That's the whole idea around paradigms.

So at some point this week, sadly, as night follows day, the news will report another fatality, and another. And the best solution, one that dare not speak its name will be for those that can to move, yes move away from trouble spots.

Deja Vu. In Britain 2030, Children of Men really does exist.

Incidentally whilst writing this BBC Radio 4 is reporting a youth crime project in Nottingham. While you can't deny the social worth of these schemes, oh how the media loves them as the panacea for youngsters at risk.



In 1992 while reporting for the BBC youth show and BBC Radio 5 I reported on a UK-wide scheme of crime gone rampant

Back then it was cars and joy riding (TWOKING - Taking without consent) which became a media obsession; though there were young teenagers with guns in Manchester we interviewed.

That was 1992, today politicans still haven't found a solution other than: "lets bang em up".

And that's a shame, a real let down to a generation of youngsters who start off their journey growing up just like you and me.

* David Cameron, Tory leader, comments on Radio 4 Today that violent crime has doubled in last ten years

Guns and assailants

Dirk Coetzee wss part of South Africa's apartheid government's death-squads. He commited countless atrocities, the most prublicised was murdering Griffiths Mxenge, the human rights lawyer for ANC personnel.

"We stabbed him 35 times and then burnt his body ... while that was happening we were having a brai ( barbeque) nearby... " Coetzee would later tell me.

I was at the Holiday Inn in down town Joburg with friends eating when a senior South African broadcast manager spotted him. "I want to talk to him. I have alway wanted to talk to him", I said. Whilst I was a freelance correspondent based in South Africa 93-94 the opportunity never arose. Now here I was some years on (98) and he was in talking distance.

It sounds so long ago, but seems like yesterday

"Why don't you go and ask him?" was her reply.

I approached hands in the air talking courteously but loudly so he could make out my English accent. At his table, four friends all packing and his son stared up.

Then he agreed. A journalist who had never held a dvcam in his life was given the camera and a few instructions and then we started to film. I'll post the interview on viewmagazine.tv

What are some of the things his done?
Why did he do what he did?
Did he not feel any remorse?
Is he a free man? ( Coetzee got amnesty for talking to the Truth and Reconcilaition Commission) But is he a free man?

Then after 30 minutes we wrapped up, chatted off camera for a while and the star formation his son and colleagues had formed around us eliminiating any blind spots from a potential assailant dissipated.

What did I get from the interview? The unique opportunity to hear a calm rationale of why he killed and what he felt. He talked about being a reformed person, a Christian. I felt I could have asked him anything and he would not have shirked from it. It's one interview I wil never forget. You can see the unedited version soon.

Footnote: this is one of those incidents that shows videojournalism strengths. I had a camera, sa an opportunity for a story and within minutes had a remarkable film, and because it was on dv, its physical integrity has held well.

12 possibles for looking at gun crime

1. Intervention - accept that the age of intervention to help this generation is far below 15 years - perhaps as young as 8-10 when young boys start to figure out the peverse attraction of a maligned together ness as in gangs. Perhaps what's needed is a heavier dependence on life-skills presented by a 'different' sort of teacher, capable of engaging latch key students after school, who would otherwise be up for grooming in their troubled neighborhoods

2. That at the heart of society ills is a break down in discipline. Children's rights are to be applauded but at the point when they challenge adults, even in the event of being admonished, something's wrong. Progressive liberal laws need to be reexamined, unless like the prime minister you believe gun crime is being committed by a small section of offenders - which it possibly is - but the implication is we (society) shouldn't lose our perspective.

3. Stripping teachers of any power empowers unruly kids looking to fill a power vaccum. I was once physically assualted reporting from within a school. The headteacher looked on powerless.

4. A society can't have it all ways. Some good liberal friends of mine in South Africa carry guns - some are broadcasters. "They need their Glocks for protection, against criminals", they say. I raise a non judgemental eyebrow. Now put a stressed out kid with a grudge, and no reasoning skill in the place of the broadcaster.

5. Accept politicians do not have the answers. Most politicans will never be privy to the level of unaceptable behaviour from youngesters. Yes, their children carrying guns etc. It's a world away from that transcribed to them via news headlines or even from constituents. If politicians were serious about this, they'd be moe aggresive behind the scenes campaigns and embrace of community heads who have some idea.

6. Accept that when politicans want to do something - a priority issue - dangerous dogs act, invasion of iraq - they'll muster all available resources to make it work, irrespective of the odds.

7. Tougher gun laws e.g. lower the age of criminality to 17 will have some effect, but how much. Gangs exploit the law by making minors carry guns. You're only forcing an even younger generation to become the custodians of illegal arms through the actions of those older.

8. The pressure to join a gang is intolerable for youngsters. My nephew attended a good Catholic school. His mother worked double time - white collar job - to keep him their. But in growing up he was lured by the 'intoxicating' lifestyle of friends on his estate, who could do what they wanted, anytime at anyplace. By the time my sister-in-law had a hang of what was going on, it seemed almost too late.

9. There exist in Britain a lost generation. They're gone, unreedemable. They don't respect authority and live by their own code of conduct and summary justice. That much I witnessed also in the townships of South Africa - where the I first heard the term lost generation. If you were an actuarist you'd probably say there's nothing you can do about it. Liberal society believes that a henous cop out.

10. Stronger show of force. Some are bored, some aren't salvagable. Some have no idea what they're doing. Dis them in any number of ways you'd consider irrelevant and the consequences could be dire. They're not bothered by TV News or newspaers, so there needs to be an alternative show of force to demonstrate society's unaccaeptance.
e.g. million man march. It won't stop it over night, but will raise the consciousness of the issues and the legacy.

11. The media has a fundamental point to play. Unlike some countries that use TV as social tool, we in the west haved far advanced on that, so we watch what we want with the understanding that the broadcaster has limited rights, and beyond that its up to you. If there's an audience, there's a buck to be made.
There have been assualts every other day in the UK. The media would have you believe it's only happening now. Before hand it wasn;t interested. And two days after what's happened, it's yesterday's news and has moved onto something else. If this issue merited national emergency we'd see a different media response. Wasn't it the New York Times that ran with the 911 story in some form on its front page for a whole year? Somebody wanted to keep the tragedy in the consciousness of the nation.

12. Yes it's about money, but also aggressve intervention with parents who have lost control of their charge. What can be done? Accept that nothing will change, because after all the hullabaloo, what WILL fundamentally change tomorrow?
New prisons?