INITIATIVE:THE BRITISH prime minister has signalled a new drive against gang culture following police reports in Manchester, London and Salford in the northwest of England, that a nucleus of the rioters was organised by inner-city gang leaders.
Senior police have briefed MPs and political leaders, including David Cameron, that well-known gang leaders were at the centre of the second and third day of the looting, even though the majority of rioters were not gang members.
Mr Cameron told MPs that “gangs were at the heart of the protests and have been behind the co-ordinated attacks”.
He has also asked the home secretary Theresa May to work with figures such as Bill Bratten, the former chief of police in New York and Los Angeles, on how to combat gangs.
The announcement of a new drive is an admission that the government approach has so far been ill co-ordinated and under-resourced.
Graham Stringer, a Manchester MP, is one of many MPs briefed by senior police on the role of gangs in some of the riots.
He says the government has diverted resources away from tackling gang leaders to track Muslim extremists.
The Labour Party has been demanding action for months, following a major report on gangs commissioned by the previous Labour administration and published in June 2010 under the coalition government.
The report found there was no co-ordinated response to gangs and that responses were patchy and, at times, counter-productive.
Barbara Wilding, the former chief constable of South Wales Police, caused a furore in 2008 when she warned that family ties had been abandoned and replaced by “tribal loyalty” among young gang members, who had become “almost feral”. – (Guardian service)