Croydon celebrates going from London’s knife crime capital to one year free of teen murders

By Tara O’Connor, Local Democracy Reporter

In 2021, Croydon recorded the most teenage murders of any London borough, leading to it being called the city’s knife crime capital.

That year five teenagers, the youngest aged just 14, lost their lives on the streets of Croydon.

In 2022 Croydon ended the year without any teenage deaths from knife crime.

Youth worker Anthony King puts this down to grassroots organisations pulling together with the police and local council.

He said: “There have been stabbings but they were 12per cent down in 2022 with no teenage deaths. I think that is down to the extensive collaboration that has taken place borough-wide.”

Mr King is the chair of the My Ends project which was started in 2020.

Every Friday it brings together between 60 and 80 participants to speak about the challenges facing the borough – this includes young people, Croydon Council, local police and headteachers.

He believes this gives young people a space to speak honestly about what impacts them.

Mr King said: “It has been good working with the local authority and the police. The council needs the support of the grassroots organisations and the police have gone the extra mile to engage with young people from disadvantaged communities.”

Asked why 2021 was such a bad year for youth violence in Croydon, Mr King said the pandemic had catastrophic impacts on the mental health of young people.

He said: “There were many reasons it was so bad, we had just come out of the pandemic and I believe young people’s mental health had been really impacted by being locked down. The borough also went bankrupt [in November 2020] which meant some spaces weren’t accessible anymore.

“It felt like there wasn’t enough intervention from the community everything felt a lot more fragmented.”

Mr King thinks Croydon can overcome the challenges it may face in 2023.

He added: “My hopes for 2023 are that, as a borough, we maintain working together and that the Met continue to make the community feel safe, especially the Black community.

“I hope the local authority will continue their commitment to working with grassroots organisations to deter young people from youth violence.”

Data compiled by the Mayor of London’s office for policing and crime shows that between 2019-21 Croydon suffered the highest volumes of teenage violence in the capital with 141 offences recorded.

Met Police data shows there were 11,969 knife crime offences recorded in Croydon in 2021.

In the 12 months to November 2022, the latest published data, there were 6,843 knife crime offences recorded, down 22pc on the same period the year before.

In September, Croydon council’s Violence Reduction Network (VRU) said it would be focussing its efforts to crack down on violence in nine neighbourhoods in the borough.

The authority hopes to solve “the underlying causes” of violence, beginning with identifying the areas most at risk

They were chosen using 13 variables, including the number of hate crimes, school exclusions and deliberate fires, and the rates of domestic violence, employment and income deprivation.

A spokesman for Croydon council said: “There is a huge amount of preventative work being done by the council, the police and organisations across Croydon to disrupt criminal activity, and encourage young people to stay safe and make positive choices – however there is much more to be done.”

Pictured top: Croydon residents gathered at the My Ends meeting bow their heads in a two minutes silence for teenagers killed in 2021 (Picture: Tara O’Connor)