Another teen loses life in the streets of South London

Father of stab victim Kwame Ofosu -Asare is yet another parent to voice concerns over the number of brutal deaths that have taken place in the South London Borough to date. 17-year-old Kwame was stabbed in Brixton near South Moorlands Estate last Friday. The 17-year-old who was originally from Catford, is thought to have been caught up in a number of  "tit-for-tat" gang related stabbings.

Kwaku Ofusu-Asare, Kwame's father was reported to have said "When are we going to stop saying that somebody is in the wrong place at the wrong time? Are we going to whitewash the cracks in the wall or are we going to mend the wall properly?"

Detectives have released CCTV footage of a silver Vauxhall Zarifa mini cab believed to be used by the killers, It was reported to have drove around for 20mins before dropping off the suspects around the time Kwame was killed.

Kwame's brutual murder is one of six attacks in Lambeth in over a week, and could have been  in response to an earlier attack on another 17-year-old in West Norwood. The victim was reported to have been stabbed 37 times.

I personally feel that we all need to work as a community to stamp out this negative gang mentality our young are adopting. It is not the police's responsibility alone, they can only enforce the law once a crime has been committed...But how many more young lives do we need to lose before something is done. I can admit that there is no such thing as a fail safe method to resolve some of the problems we are currently facing...However the only way forward would be to work with the police and MP's and EACH OTHER to work towards giving our youth positive aspirations.

" Is there a safe part of the body to stab someone? Yes said the children..."

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/707281-bid-to-cut-deadly-knife-crime-has-failed

A shocked Camberwell youth worker posed the question to a group of secondary school children last week and was surprised when half of the room raised their hands and said yes. Junior Smart, one of the leaders for the St Giles Trust SOS project in Camberwell, asked the question and an alarming majority believed that a stab wound to the leg or shoulder would not be serious.

The Camberwell based project leader then reminded the class that Damilola had also been stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle and explained  "How easy it is to do something theres no going back from". Mr Smart was reported to have said that "The problem is often they think there are no real consequences for sosme very serious actions".

The SOS Plus project which sends ex-offenders volunteers into schools to highlight the risks of being involved in gangs was set up by Junior  a year ago to "demystify" the so called glamour of being caught up in criminal lifestyles.

In my own humble opinion I feel that its great that projects like The St Giles Trust are informing young people of the consequences of a criminal lifestyle...However I am not shocked or surprised that pupils in the area have a  warped sense of reality. Lets face the facts, Southwark and Lambeth alone has had over a thousand non lethal stabbings between April and October last year.