London gang killings and community-based solutions (1)

Aliyu Musa

London’s gang-related violence has claimed yet another victim. On this occasion Sami Sidhom, described as an 18-year-old A-star History and Law student of Queen Mary University, is the victim. He had been ambushed and stabbed by a gang of youth in two cars, and left lying in a pool of blood.

Within seconds the assailants fled the crime scene before anyone had the chance to identify any of them. And, although, help soon came it was not enough to save their victim’s life.

Sidhom is one of many victims of violent attacks and or gang-related crimes resulting in fatalities in the boisterous city. Since the beginning of this year no fewer than 50 lives have been lost and many fatally wounded in the attacks.

Most of the victims were either from Black and Minority Ethnic Groups (BMEG) or young men and women between the ages of 17 and 30 or both. And, often, the causes of the violence ranged from social media spats, postcode disagreements to gang wars.

Victims may not be in any way connected to the original causes of the violence, but may just, unfortunately, be caught in the crossfire. Many innocent persons, for instance, could be caught up in postcode wars simply because they live within a particular postcode that is at war with the youth of another postcode.

An unsuspecting victim who was accosted and asked by a couple of teenagers if he lived in a particular postcode ended up with life-threatening injuries after he answered in the affirmative. Such attacks could provoke revenge attacks by youth of the victims’ postcode.

Some of the victims are, sometimes, known to their assailants. In 2016 Jamel Boyce, for example, reportedly had an argument with a former schoolmate who promised to kill him. Afterwards, Jamel, who was said to have never carried a knife or belonged to a gang, was attacked and stabbed in the heart and leg.

Although the teenager miraculously survived, he is, presently, in a semi-vegetative state and, doctors say, will never recover the use of his brain.

A female victim killed in a drive-by shooting was only caught up in a gang feud due to her closeness to a target, who had, himself, been shot. Soon after, the killers were on social media mocking their victims.

Over the years, these gang-related killings have continued to steadily rise, almost overwhelming efforts to tackle them. One of the attempts made was the introduction of increased stop and search, which gave the Metropolitan Police more powers to stop people and search them if they suspected they were carrying weapons.

In 2011 and 2012, the Met reportedly carried out more than half a million stops a year. But it was said to have disproportionately targeted people of African-Caribbean backgrounds. The fact that most of the searches yielded no evidence of crime fuelled allegations of deliberate black targeting, further impacting community relations.

This development and the government’s belief that increased stops have not resulted in fewer gang-related crimes or violence led to a cut in the number of searches and a search for more community-based solutions.

In view of this a senior Scotland Yard officer, DCS Michael Gallagher, recently advocated a radical societal change. Emphasising a need for more focus on the needs of young people, Gallagher posited: “What we need is a societal change where young people, as the perpetrators and victims, feel valued and protected.”

He further argued that the problem was beyond the police and that it was impossible for them to prosecute their way out of it. Rather, it was something that required a collective problem-solving approach, in which parents, government and community groups would be involved. So how could this suggestion be translated into reality?

Most migrant communities in the UK are close knit. Nigerians, for example, have various cultural, political and religious unions through which they interact and connect with their people and country of origin.

Among the victims, from January 2018 up until now, are about 10 Nigerians. They, like many of the other victims, were caught up either in the wrong place or time or both. For example Abraham Badru was killed in late March 2018 just outside his family home in Hackney.

He, like most Nigerian migrants’ children, was well educated and ambitious. He had a Masters degree and was working as a football coach. He had been given an award for bravery after rescuing a sex attack victim and following up by appearing in court as a prosecution witness. He was, clearly, of good character and had no links with gangs.

Even beyond altruism these various Nigerian groups, being directly affected, should be able to come together and, possibly, present a common front to take up the initiative towards proffering an alternative means of resolving the problem.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is increasingly gaining currency especially where crises defy commonly applied solutions.

(To be continue)

This piece also appears in the Blueprint newspaper of Saturday, April 21, 2018.