“I don’t want to lose my life while I’m young. I want to grow up and have kids, and see my mum grow old, but danger is always around the corner, just as much as death is. All I want is peace.”
These are the emotional words of a knife crime victim from the West Midlands who is holding police chiefs in the region to account on youth violence.
Seventeen-year-old Job said he had been stabbed six times and lost friends to knife crime.
He was one of a small group of young people who gathered in Coventry for a special workshop on crime, which was organised by campaigners aiming to empower youth voice.
Some of the 15 young people, who gathered at the Coventry Boys and Girls Club, on Whitefriars Street, had first-hand experience of knife crime and gangs, and they recounted their real-life horrors to the panel.
West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster, Chief Superintendent Paul Drover and the Head of Youth Justice Services for Coventry City Council Nick Jeffreys, listened and answered questions from the group, who told them that they didn’t feel safe in the city.
The event was called My Tomorrow: A Conversation With and was the first in a series of special workshops, with different panel members each time. It was organised by the West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP) as part of the My Tomorrow campaign, which was created by young people from across the region to give them a platform to talk about their priorities, as give them access to people in positions of power.
Job told the panel that he ended up as part of a gang simply because of his postcode.
“It don’t have to always come down to attacking and violence. Why can’t we all live in more harmony and all talk?” He said.
“Do you know how many times I’ve been stabbed? Six times. I’ve had my friend die in my arms and that’s hurt me. It could be any second, it could be five seconds from now, but I never see the police.”
“It’s made me who I am today and I’m not trying to stay on the road because it’s not the way. I don’t want to sit here and put my life at risk because it’s also putting my family’s life at risk if I become a part of something I don’t want to be part of.
“As a better man I would prefer if we could all come together, stop the war, stop the whole arguing. Most of the kids who have been killed out here are innocent. They have all been dragged into things that they shouldn’t be.”
The PCC Simon Foster said: “Hearing about some of the brutal and harsh realities of their day to day experiences only provides me with yet further determination to do all I can within my power to address the challenges they have in terms of preventing, tackling and reducing violence.”
Ch Supt Paul Drover, Coventry’s local police commander, said the session was incredibly powerful and will inform the way police work with partners to tackle and prevent crimes affecting young people in Coventry.
He added: “I’m committed now. I made the commitment in the room. We’re going to bring the team together, we’re going to bring the children and young people together so they can have a say and help with how we tackle violence in the city.”
The evening workshop also touched on possible solutions, with young people emphasising a need for stronger life lessons in school to ensure they can keep themselves and others safe.
A 21-year-old who had her drink spiked at university called for practical and compulsory first-aid lessons starting in primary school and progressing to train older students to stop a bleed.
Olivia Birtwistle told the panel that she only survived because her housemates knew what to do to prevent a seizure.
She added: “We got the call from the ambulance that it was three hours away, so ok time is against us. It takes seconds for drugs to kill somebody, so they were trying to cool my temperature down so my body can regulate itself, but I wasn’t taught any of that in school.
“It should be compulsory that we are taught how to keep ourselves safe. Safety is a life essential. We need to be our own paramedic.”
The panel heard about a wide-range of problems, including the glamorisation of prison on social media, a lack of opportunities and jobs which draws young people to ‘quick money’, little to no promotion of youth activities and safe spaces on the platforms young people engage with, and a lack of trust between young people and the police.
These workshops will be regular events in Coventry, as part of the My Tomorrow campaign, allowing young people to put their thoughts and questions to people in positions of power. The campaign will ensure their ideas influence future decisions.
For more information about the My Tomorrow campaign, visit: My Tomorrow – West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership (westmidlands-vrp.org)
