In this video, you will get to see firsthand these knife-wielding young boys attack each other. Secret police video shows the utter chaos when a melee breaks out in downtown Glasgow. Gangs in Scotland have been around for decades. The brazenness of these violent mobs are nothing new there. But, the method that will be employed to combat gang violence is. A police technique that was successful in reducing violence in Boston will be used as a model for a similar program in Glasgow.How did it work in Boston? Well,basically the offenders were trailed, nailed, & then jailed,according to one officer. The Boston police dogged the suspect’s every step. But, the problem came back in Boston.(see more on that below). Hopefully, it will work in Glasgow. Here’s an excerpt from The Daily Record:
“GANG members in Glasgow’s east end are turning away from violence thanks to a hard-hitting US-style project.
Police said the £5million scheme, which uses social networking sites as a starting point, offers hope to kids as young as 10 in one of the most deprived areas of the city.
But Andy McKay, who heads the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, vowed to crack down on those who abuse the opportunity. The detective chief inspector said: “We want to help these young men turn their lives around. We want them educated, working and most of all, safe.
“If they choose to continue with the gang lifestyle, we can and we will pursue them.”
Police believe the east end of Glasgow has more than 50 gangs and as many as 700 gang members, aged 10 to 26.
The scheme, launched in Garthamlock yesterday, was adapted from Boston’s Operation Ceasefire. It worked by treating gangs as a unit and helped to dramatically reduce the number of killings in the city in the 1990s.”(End of Excerpt) Read the rest here:(http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/12/13/new-5m-scheme-to-tackle-scourge-of-glasgow-s-gang-culture-86908-20966953/
Here’s more on the problems with Operation Ceasefire from The Boston Globe:
“Surprisingly, the Boston Police Department and the TenPoint Coalition were ill-prepared to deal with a new cycle of gang violence,” the paper states. “In contrast to the 1990s, both suffered from highly dysfunctional relationships within their respective organizations and a lack of strategic focus on disrupting conflicts among high-risk youth.”
The study delves into the causes behind the stunning disintegration of an urban success story that was known across the country as the Boston Miracle.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boston suffered huge spikes in the number of homicides, especially among people 24 years and younger. In 1990, 73 people in that age group were slain in the city, according to the study.
In 1996, police started Operation Ceasefire, which focused on identifying members of gangs, offering them ways out, and threatening them with federal sentences in prisons far away from their families if they continued to be violent. Clergy from the Boston TenPoint Coalition helped by offering services to gang members, such as job and education opportunities, to steer them from trouble.
By 1999, the number of homicides had plummeted to 31 – from a record of 152 in 1990 – and the city received national praise for the decrease. By 2000, Operation Ceasefire had begun to fade away as key police officials were transferred to other units and as the department began to focus on other problems, such as the large number of ex-convicts returning to the city, according to the report.
“The city generally thought they had solved the youth violence problem,” said Christopher Winship, one of the study’s three authors and a professor of sociology at Harvard. “But you need to contain it before you ever solve it. It’s not like a disease that you get cured of.”(End of Excerpt) Read the whole article here:(http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/06/30/report_describes_missteps_on_gangs/
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