Part THREE: The unexpected reason behind London’s knife crime bloodbath – and how it’s turned murder into a moneymaking industry, writes Harriet Sergeant
A three-part special investigation by Harriet Sergeant who’s talked to gang members, grieving parents and horrified hospital staff In August, 2019, residents of Munster Square, a stone’s throw from London’s Regent’s Park, were disturbed by desperate banging on their front doors in the dead of night. Alex Smith, a 16-year-old boy with a shock of brown…
PART TWO: Just 27 seconds of savagery left Charlie – and one of his killers – bleeding to death on a roadside. This chilling account exposes the sheer folly of Sadiq Khan’s softly-softly stance on knife crime
A three-part special investigation by Harriet Sergeant who’s talked to gang members, grieving parents and horrified hospital staff Yesterday, the Mail began a three-part investigation into the scourge of knife crimein the capital. Not for five years has London seen such a rapid rise – up 20 per cent in a year, with some 14,500 incidents recorded. Since Sadiq…
PART ONE: London streets run with blood under virtue signalling Mayor Khan
A three-part special investigation by Harriet Sergeant who’s talked to gang members, grieving parents and horrified hospital staff Harry Pitman, 16 and 6ft 3in with a shock of red, curly hair and a broad, smiling face, travelled from his North London home in Haringey to enjoy the 2024 New Year fireworks. He made for fashionable Primrose Hill,…
Ghost children: the pupils who never came back after lockdown
‘There was this guy in my year who never came back to school after lockdown,’ a 14-year-old girl at a comprehensive in the Midlands says. ‘Then one day my friends and I saw him by the shopping centre. He was, like, sitting on a piece of cardboard by the side of the road, looking a…
The Iranian regime is at war with its own children
Twenty-two-year-old Hadis Najafi does not look like a foot soldier in a revolution. In the last film of Najafi alive, it is night and she’s walking down a road in Karaj, her home town, smiling and scrunching up her hair into a ponytail. She is young, blonde and on her way to a demonstration. Najafi…
Why is Sadiq Khan decriminalising dangerous drugs?
Sadiq Khan is considering a surprising initiative to stop the killings on our streets – a pilot scheme that would decriminalise cannabis in three London boroughs. Under-25s caught with the drug would no longer be prosecuted. These young people would be offered speeding course-style classes or counselling instead. Since he became mayor, Mr Khan has overseen…
The hypocrisy of ‘progressive’ middle-class drug users is ruining lives
Progressive millennials protest vehemently about racism, pronouns and the environment but have a blind spot when it comes to the odd line of coke. Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, wants to change all that. A new Government strategy aims to confront middle-class recreational drug users “with the violence of the drug trade” and “illustrate the…
Liberal elites are out of touch on law and order
‘I was cycling along Regent Street with a friend when we ran into a Black Lives Matter demonstration. A young blonde woman in yellow dungarees blocked our way. My friend asked politely if she could move. “I’m protesting,” the young woman reproved in a nice, middle-class accent, as if waving a placard was a sacred…
Teenagers are dying from our failure to confront London violence
We have abandoned boys to a surreal and terrifying landscape where gang life offers protection A former gangster was returning home after dropping off his daughter at a play date. Suddenly he stiffened. Ahead, three boys in tracksuits and gloves — “Gloves mean a gun,” he explained — bounced up and down outside a fried…
How Top Boys topple down crime’s ladder
Too many prisoners rejoin society with no education, stable housing or job prospects. No surprise that more than half reoffend within a year. I was walking through Soho with a friend, an ex-con from south London now in his 40s. Suddenly what looked like a pile of old clothes rose up from the pavement and hailed…
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Harriet Sergeant 