Campaigners raise fears over 'safe stabbing' trend among London youth gangs
Youths are knifing each other in parts of the body they believe will not lead to death
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Your support makes all the difference.Campaigners have warned against a disturbing trend of so-called "safe stabbings" in which young people are knifing each other in parts of the body they believe will not lead to death.
Patrick Green, manager of the youth education charity Ben Kinsella Trust, which was founded after the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella in 2008, said he believed the trend in London was getting worse.
“What we are doing is showing young people that you can cause lasting harm,” he told the Evening Standard. “We show them diagrams of the nerve endings, arteries.
“We want to show that even the smallest penetration can cause death or serious harm.
“Kids in the age bracket of 12 to 15 share myths with each other about knife use.”
His comments follow the Metropolitan Police beginning a new phase of Operation Sceptre, a crackdown on knife crime, by confiscating knives and other weapons and targeting people who are known to carry blades.
The operation also comes as Duncan Bew, the clinical lead for trauma and emergency surgery at King’s College Hospital, said his team in 2017 “sees more people with stab wounds than it does people with appendicitis”.
The worrying trend in London was also spoken about at a community safety meeting in Islington where Michelle McPhillips, mother of Jonathan McPhillips who was murdered at 28 years old, said there should be more effort by police to stop the latest crime wave.
“People are actually doing ‘safe stabbings’ – using a knife in a way they know won’t kill,” she told the Islington Gazette.
“A lot of people in this borough don’t know about the murder of my son.
“I am handing out leaflets myself, doing the police’s job. You understand?
“There’s no support for us out there. It’s like we are doing all the work ourselves.
“I am approaching young people on the Marquess Estate, a hotspot where a couple of months ago there were three stabbings in the space of 24 hours.”
The Evening Standard reported that more than 750 people in London have been identified by police as those who are likely to carry knives, and have been suspects in knife crimes at least twice over the past 12 months.
The youngest suspect was 13 years old.