Three murders and at least three serious assaults in two weeks...
- Thread starter editor
- Start date
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
Glad there's a separate thread for these incidents.
Seems almost glib to be discussing it on the Brixton chitter-chatter thread mixed in with talk about new coffee and cake shops etc.
Seems almost glib to be discussing it on the Brixton chitter-chatter thread mixed in with talk about new coffee and cake shops etc.
trashpony
Hag
FFS: when is this madness going to end around Brixton/Stockwell/Tulse Hill?
I'm not enjoying the way things are shaping up for the summer in the Brixton area and I'm beginning to worry that some of this bullshit is going to spill into the Country Show next month.
Oh god. I remember walking down to the show a few years' ago and having to divert down a side street as a gang of youths pursued by a load of coppers came tearing up the hill towards us
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
FFS: when is this madness going to end around Brixton/Stockwell/Tulse Hill?
I'm not enjoying the way things are shaping up for the summer in the Brixton area and I'm beginning to worry that some of this bullshit is going to spill into the Country Show next month.
I'd imagine, come the evening, there'll be masses of police there, as there have been in previous years. Saw a couple of incidents last year with police nabbing youths and searching them and the crowds getting pissed off about it (or it may have been the year before). I'm all for the police doing it there quite frankly
Lucy Fur
Well-Known Member
A couple of years ago I recall the police hearding them across the park, kinda like urban sheep dog trials. The gangs didn't seem interested in those there for the festival really, and the police seemed well on top of them in any case. I suspect it will be the same this year, just a sad but necessary part of life, best ignored as much as possible.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
A couple of years ago I recall the police hearding them across the park, kinda like urban sheep dog trials. The gangs didn't seem interested in those there for the festival really, and the police seemed well on top of them in any case. I suspect it will be the same this year, just a sad but necessary part of life, best ignored as much as possible.
A new sport is invented....
Minnie_the_Minx
someinenhhanding menbag and me ah bollox
I remember noticing as well that there were far fewer pit bulls/dodgy as they'd also been nabbed
Winot
I wholeheartedley agree with your viewpoint
On the chitter chatter thread where this was first discussed I said this:
and memespring helpfully publicised the Lambeth CPCG ("Community-Police Consultative Group") monthly meetings, of which there is one tonight. The minutes for the May meeting are online here and make interesting reading (the meeting happened just after the Easter shooting outside the church on Lambert Rd).
I'm glad to see that the police, community leaders, Councillors and local MPs are taking this problem seriously, although clearly there are no easy answers, and what's particularly depressing is that the action which can be taken long term to address the problem is coming under funding pressure. As the police chief said in the meeting, "enforcement should be the last and not the first line of defense".
Anyway, I can't go tonight, but will try to make it to the next meeting on 5 July.
and memespring helpfully publicised the Lambeth CPCG ("Community-Police Consultative Group") monthly meetings, of which there is one tonight. The minutes for the May meeting are online here and make interesting reading (the meeting happened just after the Easter shooting outside the church on Lambert Rd).
I'm glad to see that the police, community leaders, Councillors and local MPs are taking this problem seriously, although clearly there are no easy answers, and what's particularly depressing is that the action which can be taken long term to address the problem is coming under funding pressure. As the police chief said in the meeting, "enforcement should be the last and not the first line of defense".
Anyway, I can't go tonight, but will try to make it to the next meeting on 5 July.
leanderman
Street Party: July 2
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
The question is how seriously is everyone else treating it? Whilst the vast majority of us see it as a problem that somebody else should fix without bothering us, I don't think we'll see much improvement.
TruXta
tired
One of the main issues seem to be lack of employment opportunities for young w/c people in the area. Idle hands and all that. Not sure what the local community can do about that except start up businesses that provide jobs.
TruXta
tired
It's not just the w/c that lacks jobs, but young black people in the area are much harder hit than white m/c peeps.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
I don't think that's the real issue at all. The bigger problems are at an even earlier stage.
It's not the stupid kids that end up being the real problem. It's the clever but unmotivated ones. So that's what we need to look at. Not that we shouldn't be doing everything we can to ensure that there are as many jobs as possible. However the thing we MUST do is ensure that the smarter kids have better ambitions for their future than dealing crack.
That means they need examples. That's why I say this is something we all have a share in fixing. They need to see that somebody no smarter than they are can get a decent career. They need to see it before they've given up on school. Their families and their neighbours need to see that it's possible for them to do something with their life and keep repeating the message. That also means that ALL of us have to treat them as potential high achievers and not primarily as "a problem".
I've heard some of the kids on this estate "freestylin'" on the street. If they can string words together like that the only thing stopping them being a barrister is the assumption that they could never get a law degree. The way the local gang organises crack dealing there have to be at least a few of them who could show Tesco's management a thing or two about retail. It pisses me off that the message they get from parents and teachers is "work really hard and you might get a job". My attitude at that age would have been to say "fuck that", if I'm going to work my ass off then at the very least I'm going to aim to be an astronaut.
TruXta
tired
I hear what you're saying but worry this'll descend into a "there's a problem with black English culture wrt aspirations". Which tbh I'm not sure is true, and really not sure whether it's a good strategy.
stevebradley
Well-Known Member
As mentioned before, there are no easy solutions.
But given that most gang members have extremely low educational attainment levels and have usually been excluded from school, they'd find most job opportunities closed to them even if they were interested in them.
The council did research a good few years back which identified a pattern over the years whereby young people tend to get involved in gangs : absentee father, mother struggling to control family ; kids in trouble at school from young age, initially just for ordinary behaviourial issues ; eventually get excluded from school for being too difficult to handle ; then fall in with other excluded kids in the area ; start involvement in petty crime to kill time and raise cash (e.g. mugging, minor drug dealing) ; escalate from there etc etc. There is also an issue that gangs often provide the nearest thing that some young people nowadays get to a family or a supportive environment, whilst for others gang membership begins as a defensive move to ensure they don't get picked on.
The point of the research mentioned above is that, for a lot of young people who are involved in gangs, it was predictable some years earlier that there was a high chance that they'd go that way.
Identifying the signs at an early age is one thing, however - stopping it from happening is another. That's where youth diversion activities and initiatives to give young people positive role models and broader horizons comes in, but it's extremely hard work that really needs the full involvement of the community as well. I'm not a great fan of the phrase 'it take a village to raise a child', but in this context it is completely true.
There are no easy answers, but I really don't think the core is about jobs. Look at the major spate of shootings that happened in London in 2006/7 - which claimed a number of lives in Lambeth (e.g. Billy Cox on Fenwick Estate). That occured during a period of unprecedented economic boom in London.
We're not going to solve anything here with all the usual navel-gazing about unemployment, fractured families etc. If we really want to help we need to invest our own time. Perhaps by joining the CPCG, or mentoring young people. There are no end of opportunities at the volunteer centre on Brixton Station Road http://www.lambethvac.org.uk/s-LVAC_Homepage
One problem we have is that in Brixton there's very little policing by consent. People generally don't want to help the police unless a child has been killed. It seems to me that because the police lack consent they use intimidation instead. It doesn't seem to matter to them whether they're arresting the right people, so long as they appear to be in control. Can we ever get to the point where Brixtonites grass each other up and smile at their neighbourhood bobby? It seems to me we're stuck in a vicious circle in which the police are forever making enemies by abusing their powers.
One problem we have is that in Brixton there's very little policing by consent. People generally don't want to help the police unless a child has been killed. It seems to me that because the police lack consent they use intimidation instead. It doesn't seem to matter to them whether they're arresting the right people, so long as they appear to be in control. Can we ever get to the point where Brixtonites grass each other up and smile at their neighbourhood bobby? It seems to me we're stuck in a vicious circle in which the police are forever making enemies by abusing their powers.
TruXta
tired
Thanks for the input Steve, and I totally agree that there are no easy solutions. As to your last point, that there was a spate of violence in 2006-7, my question would be: were job prospects for young (mostly black and ethnic minority) people in Lambeth actually that much better in that period?
stevebradley
Well-Known Member
I think that's a little simplistic EJ. I doubt those involved paid much attention to parents or teachers, regardless of what they said. I suspect from an early age they'd pretty much checked-out of main stream aspirations. Instead the reality is that drug dealing offers relatively easy money and, for many, an attractive lifestyle.
If the gang you mentioned are that organised then they'd earn more money in a week or two selling crack than they'd make in a year doing the drudgery of a Tesco's management role. Drug dealing gives them a very flexible lifestyle where they're the boss, and they get respect in their area. No getting up early everyone morning and traipsing off to a mind-numbing job day in day out. Plus they also know that the law is pretty ineffective at dealing with drug dealing, so if they're smart the chances of them getting a sizeable prison scentence are low.
They'd laugh at Tesco's if they offered them a job.
stevebradley
Well-Known Member
I really can't say. I doubt they were worse, yet the level of violence certainly was.
But again - if a young person has no qualifications, a history of disruptive behaviour in school, leading to exclusion, has poor social skills, self expression/anger management issues etc - what sort of job opportunities would you expect would be genuinely open to them ?
The idea that a job is all that is needed is too simplistic I fear. Sadly many of these young people are well on the road to unemployability by their early teens.
TruXta
tired
I'm not saying that a job is all that is needed, but having reasonable job prospects is sort of a pre-requisite for having employment aspirations in the first place. If you grow up with male role models that themselves have been partly shut out of the job market and as a result have taken to the shadow economy that's what you learn. Along that way you'll also learn that violence solves conflicts, that being angry and selfish leads to good things and so on. Jobs has to be a major part of any solution.
Laughing Toad
Turn the volume down please.
It sounds like you aren't clear on skills required to be a barrister or a retailer.
kittyP
Pluviophile
I don't think it's got anything to do with job prospects to be honest.
I was a reasonably well behaved teenager and come from what I would imagine is considered a very good home life, but the times I did go off the rails, the idea that I may be able to work my arse off for the rest of my life in some job, that I (possibly) cared nothing about, made me worse.
Waving job prospects at someone does nothing by it's self.
A complete change of view on life is what is needed and I have no idea how we go about doing that for most of population let alone these kids, who I genuinely feel for.
I was a reasonably well behaved teenager and come from what I would imagine is considered a very good home life, but the times I did go off the rails, the idea that I may be able to work my arse off for the rest of my life in some job, that I (possibly) cared nothing about, made me worse.
Waving job prospects at someone does nothing by it's self.
A complete change of view on life is what is needed and I have no idea how we go about doing that for most of population let alone these kids, who I genuinely feel for.
TruXta
tired
But it's not about "waving job prospects" at all. The point is that when there's no reasonable prospects of jobs over generations, that in itself creates a culture of decreasing aspirations (hate that word btw), where in the end the very idea of getting a legit job is seen as slightly absurd. It has nothing to do with being black, white or yellow, it's to do with long-term socioeconomic circumstances that over time creates a particular kind of culture with particular practices, values and norms.
Similar threads
