Stabbing: curb gangs
Published: 8 July, 2011
FOLLOWING your front-page article about the tragic stabbing on the Andover estate (Another mum in mourning, July 1), we are clearly facing a very worrying situation in Islington.
In the last two months alone there have been six stabbings in Islington (and these are only the ones the police know about) and knife crime is up by more than a third in the past year (April-June 2011), according to police figures.
Yet, the council cut more than £250,000 from youth services last July and in the budget in February it axed funding for police officers at schools, parenting programmes, youth offending work and youth services.
No doubt the Labour council leadership will seek to blame the government for these cuts. But last year the council managed to underspend on council services by £7million and all this money has simply been re-directed into the council’s reserves.
I have now written to the leader of the council asking that some of this money be used to reverse the cuts outlined above. The council should also consider any other urgent measures to reassure residents that this knife crime epidemic is being taken seriously. To date, we have heard little or nothing from the council about what it is doing in its community leadership role.
In 2007, following the fatal stabbings of Martin Dinnegan and Nassurideen Osawe, the council set up its independent Commission for Young People’s Safety and Services. As a result, the council allocated additional funding for a gang-prevention strategy and for knife detection equipment for police. In the light of the latest fatal stabbing and other knife-related incidents, residents are rightly now asking what is happening with the council’s gang-prevention strategy as it no longer seems to be working effectively.
I urge Labour councillors to respond to the community’s real fears that knife crime is spiralling out of control in Islington.
CLLR TERRY STACY
Lib Dem leader of the Opposition