By Dwayne Grossett
Throughout
media and ethnic cultures, especially black youths, gangs and violence seems to
play a big part. Within the UK, especially the countries capital London, gun
and knife crime just seems to be rising.
Gun
crime has risen a whopping 42% whilst knife is at 24% that in any case isn’t
good, however overall crime is at 4.5% to nearly 774,737 offences with 16.72%
counted as being solved, down by 18.8% the previous year. However one aspect
that the media and police seem to ignore is the peer pressure that teenagers
feel when it comes to gang culture. Within London gangs are located walking
distance to couple bus stops away from each other, so when you think about why
the gun and knife crime casualties, this plays a big part; so a number of people
tend to associate themselves with gangs due to peer pressure from friends or
olders recruiting them to join but a lot join to have that sense of protection.
To
get a clearer insight, I met up with an anon gang member to ask a few questions
about life on the streets as a gang member, why he got involved and does he
want to leave.
Hey, thank you for allowing me to
interview you
No
problem, just wanted to give a different insight into the lifestyle
So firstly, how old are you?
I’m
19, turning 20 years old in about 3 months time
Wow that’s quite young, when did you get
involved with a gang?
To be
honest, to us its not really a gang, these are guys I either went school with
or simply knew from my area. These are my family. So to answer your question,
probably around 12 years old, but got proper into the lifestyle around 14/15.
When you say ‘proper got into the
lifestyle’, what do you mean by that?
Erm,
you know, repping the name and fighting other guys from other areas and then
that led to selling drugs and having to carry weapons.
So in school were you academically fine
or were you the disruptive type?
If
I’m being honest, I was in the top set for most of my classes, I wanted to be a
lawyer or a doctor when I was younger but as I got older, I got more focused on
quick money and girls.
So why join a gang, if you future seemed
to be so bright or at least on the right path to be?
By Daw
You
know what it is; London is a small place so your opps (rival gang) would live
right round the corner. Before we even associated ourselves with our gang, we
would get questioned about where we were from, If weren’t from that area, we
would either get robbed or even worse, beaten up.
So you joined a gang to get protection
basically?
As I
said we’ve all grown up with each other and that, so there are other reasons,
including money, the image of the bad boy but if I’m being honest, yes
protection did play a part. But it sometimes has more to do with the reputation
you get for it.
What do you mean by that?
I
mean, turn on the TV and you see all the rappers who have a name from the bad
boy life, not all of us can be rappers but we live that life too. Girls love us
for that and when you have a name that holds weight, that’s like being a superstar
of the ends.
So lastly, would you say you want to live
this life forever, or do you want to leave?
To be
honest let me be real, you can’t be 25 to 30+ and still be repping a postcode
when you have a wife and kids and bigger fishes to fry. Right now I don’t
really have any responsibilities and most of the older lot who still do this
are in jail or they’re dead. More time we don’t want to live this life but this
life choose us, its what I grew up into. If I didn’t join, I probably would
have been a victim, a guy who gets picked on everyday or gets killed trying to
defend myself with no one there to back me. So yeah ideally I want to leave the
life but right now its like I got shackles on.
Well, thanks for answering my questions
and I wish you all the best and hope you stay safe.
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