Anti-Gang Police To Target Primary Pupils

The young man’s face is out of picture, the camera focusing only on the gash splitting his thumb from the rest of his fingers.

“I put my hand up to stop the blade,” he explains matter-of-factly as he describes how he was attacked in his own home. Was it to do with gangs? “Probably,” he replies.

The scene, from a Glasgow accident and emergency unit, is designed to shock. Part of a new police DVD it was premiered yesterday to an audience of adult campaigners and officials. All flinched. Some turned away. But this DVD is for children, some as young as 10. And for many of them, the film, called As It Is, holds few surprises.

“That’s not a rare occurrence,” said Phil Walker of Glasgow Community Safety Services, one of the bodies behind the DVD.

“The wounds you saw happen frequently in this city. It’s an issue that stops a lot of young Glaswegians taking their rightful place in society.”

Mr Walker ought to know. His own son ended up in hospital after watching Saturday’s Scotland game in a city-centre pub. Glasgow’s culture of recreational violence isn’t restricted to the peripheral schemes featured in the film.

The new DVD is made up of three elements: CCTV footage of gang fighting; interviews with current and former gang members; and the testimonies of parents whose children have been hurt or killed.

It will be shown to children in primary seven across Glasgow and, perhaps, elsewhere in Scotland and comes with a lesson pack to help teachers get over the message on territorialism.

Sergeant Stevie Kinvig, of Easterhouse police station, has been touring local schools for years with his bucket of blades, everything from the golf club, still the weapon of choice for most gang members, to bladed knuckledusters and machetes. He has been one of the main forces behind As It Is. It is not, he admits, easy viewing.

“It can be very stressing,” he said. “This is about the next generation affected by territorialism, by alcohol and by gang fighting. Nothing like this has been produced before.”

Mr Kinvig praised some of the victims of gang crime who took part in the film. One was Karen Timoney, whose 13-year-old son is still recovering from horrific injuries after he was repeated struck with a machete. “He was brutally attacked by a gang of youths in their 20s,” she said yesterday. “He’s been fantastic and he’s a survivor. He had two massive gashes to his head and his hands have been severely damaged and he has lost a finger. I hope this DVD reaches out to these gang people.”

‘He had two massive gashes to his head and he had lost a finger’

Less lucky was Hugh Burns. Just 12, he tried to run away from gangs in Carmyle in Glasgow’s east end. He jumped into the Clyde on a cold evening and drowned. That was 1996. His dad, also Hugh, still hasn’t recovered.

“Just imagine what your mum and dad will feel,” Mr Burns said in a videoed appeal for children to stay out of gangs. “They go into your room and they still smell your clothes. They can still sense you about the house. It’s just an emptiness that is left.”

Gang members talk openly of the “buzz” and “adrenalin” of fighting, of how it is an everyday part of their lives.

“It’s a gamble every time you are in a gangfight,” said one boy. “If you are going to walk away or not.”

What do children make of the DVD? Anne Hood, deputy head of Lochend Community High School in Easterhouse, admitted even second-year pupils found it shocking. But gang violence wasn’t something alien to them. “They were very much aware of it,” she said, “even if it did not impinge on their own lives.”

Senior police officers yesterday defended the use of graphic images of violence and its consequences.

Assistant chief constable John Nielson said many youngsters would already be familiar with its contents. “It’s hard-hitting to us because we don’t live there. Ten-year-olds are exposed to their brothers, sisters and cousins engaging in gang violence.”

Margaret Curran, Labour MSP for Baillieston, was one of the first to see the DVD. “I was moved by it,” she said. “It had real impact. It does show we are talking about serious stuff, not just gangs hanging about in the streets.”