Streets of London

Revealed: 170 gangs on streets of London
By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:35am BST 12/08/2007
Page 1 of 3

They hunt in packs and use knives and pistols to settle feuds and punish perceived 'disrespect'. The policeman leading the fight back explains the enormity of his task

Detective Chief Superintendent Barry Norman thought he had seen it all during his 28 years with the Metropolitan Police Force: gruesome murders, brutal rapes and vicious armed robberies.

Yet, as he rose through the ranks from a constable to the head of Scotland Yard's Violent Crime Directorate, nothing prepared him for the scale of the task he now faces - tackling gang warfare.
Scotland Yard has just completed the task of counting how many street gangs there are in London.

The results are staggering: there are more than 170, some of them up to 100-strong. It means on any given night, several thousand gang members are roaming the capital, many of them thirsting for violence. In other British cities, notably Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham, there is a frighteningly similar picture.

"Serious youth violence is the biggest problem we have today in London - with the possible exception of terrorism," Mr Norman told The Sunday Telegraph. "Nothing frightens people more, and when that violence takes place in a group setting, it is all the more shocking.

"If I could achieve just one more thing in my service, it would be to wake up the whole of London to this problem. Trying to suppress [gang] crime on a day-to-day basis is like holding a football underwater. Eventually it just comes flying back in your face."

DCS Norman was speaking just days after Barbara Reid told an inquest that her son, Jessie James, 15, had been killed in a park on Moss Side, Manchester, because he refused to join a gang. She urged local people to stand up and "denounce this evil in our community".

On Wednesday, a year-long government study concluded that black teenagers urgently needed role models to divert them from the world of gangs and criminality.

Continued

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