Children killing children: Inside Greater Manchester’s teen knife crime epidemic
| Published date | 30 January 2022 |
| Publication title | Manchester Evening News: Web Edition Articles (England) |
He has admitted a number of offences including being caught by police in possession of a six-inch kitchen knife in a public place, namely Heaton Park.
READ MORE: " The only way it ends is death or jail": The fear and anger about stabbings on north Manchester's streets
Asked by the magistrates if there is any 'specific reason' he was carrying a knife the boy mumbles “not really", in reply.
The boy has no previous convictions and is sentenced to a six month Referral Order which requires him to meet with the Youth Justice Service to draw up a contract of rehabilitation.
His mum agrees to pay her son’s costs totalling £107 at a rate of £10 a week and the hearing is over in a matter of minutes.
Serious youth violence soars 200 per cent in Manchester
Outside court, the Manchester Evening News approached the boy and his mum to ask if he would elaborate any further on his offence.
Free from the gaze of the magistrates, the teenager opens up and tells a story which gets to the heart of why knife violence among young boys is soaring in Greater Manchester.
It is a story about the toxic mix of entrenched deprivation, self-perpetuating fear and a high-stakes gang culture inflamed by social media which is driving knife-carrying into many different corners of the region, from the classroom to the bus stop.
In 2019, Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Rob Potts warned that knife crime was no longer just "a London thing".
And while efforts to understand and combat the problem have undoubtedly been scaled up, such as with the launch of the GM-wide Violence Reduction Unit, a Manchester Evening News investigation lays bare the size of the task.
We have unearthed figures which reveal serious youth violence offences have risen by 200 per cent in the city of Manchester alone in just two years.
Most urban police force areas saw a reduction in knife offences in 2020-21 due to the coronavirus lockdowns, but in Greater Manchester they went up 4 per cent.
Homicides also increased in the the region by 16 per cent.
It is understood Greater Manchester Police believe this is in part due to their improvement in recording crimes since a series of damning inspection reports.
But a trawl of the Manchester Evening News archives gives just a small flavour of how these figures translate into individual incidents.
In the 12 months from January 2021-22, we have reported on at least one stabbing every week where either the victim or the alleged perpetrator was a teenager.
Eight of those incidents were fatal and resulted in police launching a murder investigation including the shocking killings of 15-year-old Reece Tansey in Bolton and 17-year-old Josiah Norman in Salford.
Teen stabbings have happened in all ten boroughs of Greater Manchester, from places as different as Ramsbottom and Hale, to Ashton-under-lyne and Reddish, to Swinton and Oldham.
And 2022 has started in similarly tragic fashion with the murder of Kennie Carter, the 16-year-old stabbed to death in Stretford last week.
Six boys aged between 14 and 17 have been arrested.
On Friday night a 16-year-old boy was knifed in chest in Next in the Arndale centre. Dramatic footage shows teenage gang screaming in Arndale as boy, 16, stabbed in Next
This morning a boy of 17 was found stabbed to death in a park in Salford.
Young lives are being lost in horrendous circumstances leaving behind a trail of trauma -from friends and family to witnesses and emergency services.
If children are dying in the streets, surely we all have a duty to ask ourselves why
'He was screaming at me saying he's going to stab me'
The boy at Manchester's youth court was from Whitefield in Bury and claimed he only started carrying a knife because he had himself been threatened by another boy after a petty argument outside school.
“Someone threw a rock, the rock hit off a wall and hit this kid in his face,” he said.
“[Another boy] got in an altercation with my mate.
“They started fighting. I’ve gone in to split it up -that’s when he pulled the knife out. I started running off.
“I couldn’t really see it [the knife] I just looked back and saw this silver thing in his hand. He was screaming and chasing me.
“He said when he sees me he’s going to stab me.
“I never carried a knife before.
“It’s my mum’s. I just went and picked it up, I just thought if I see this kid he’s going to try and stab me if I don’t have a knife to protect myself.”
When asked for her thoughts on this story, his mum said simply: “It’s very sad, I had no idea.”
The teen said he knew at least three friends who had been stabbed in the past year including one who had to be airlifted to hospital and was lucky to survive.
The boy’s mum confirmed the truth of this incident, adding: “I know the parent of the boy he’s talking about, thank god he survived.”
'They're both from the 8 but they don't like each other'
Postcode rivalries between teens, intensified by the ability the goad each other via social media, is fast-becoming recognised as one of the major issues around knife violence.
The boy went on to claim his friend was caught up in a feud between boys from the M8 area of Manchester which covers Cheetham Hill and Crumpsall.
“These lads thought he was from Cheetham Hill, even though he was from Whitefield", the teen said.
“But they thought [my mates] were all from the other side of Cheetham Hill that they don’t like.
“It’s Waterloo and Huxley [housing estates], they’re both from the 8 [postcode] but they don’t like one another."
The M.E.N understands there are currently at least two significant feuds linked to the M8 area that have led to serious violence in the area and beyond.
One 'beef' is between the rival estates in Cheetham Hill, Huxley and Waterloo, while another is between Waterloo and the neighbouring M7 postcode in Broughton, Salford, it is believed.
The situation is made more complex because some of the fighting involves so-called 'youngers' -boys in the early to mid-teens, and some involves 'olders' -men who could be in their 20s or 30s, but are more likely to be only just adults themselves aged 18 or 19.
The feud is also being played out through 'drill' rap videos on YouTube.
One shows Waterloo 'youngers' boasting of their dominance over 'the 8' area while their opponents have hit back in the comments underneath.
"These jokemen aren’t 8 block, Huxley runs the 8 and that’s straight facts, these water neeks [drug dealers] are 8 rejects," reads one comment.
"I don’t care if the ygs [youngers] have squashed the beef, for us olders it’s still on, f waterloo.”
'The system is lumbering'
The postcode gang wars stretch beyond Manchester.
In Oldham, many in the system have been worried about the rise in youth violence for...
To continue reading
Request your trial