Oral evidence: Gangs and youth crime, HC 199Tuesday 10 June 2014

Oral evidence, 10 June 2014.

Witness

Sheldon Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Gangsline, gave evidence.

Chair

Mr Thomas, thank you very much for coming to give evidence to the Select Committee. As I said, we have just commenced our inquiry. You are our second witness, so we are at the very early stages. You have been the founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Gangsline. Can you tell us at the start roughly how many people telephone Gangsline on a weekly or monthly basis?

Sheldon Thomas

Gangsline first started out as an outreach many years ago when we decided that there were not enough organisations or individuals going on to estates, especially deprived no-go area estates in London and other parts of the country. So we started out as an outreach outfit going out into those communities and engaging with hardcore gang leaders and gang members. In fact, our employees are all ex-gang members.

Chair

Sorry, somebody has got a recording device on or a telephone that is playing back in the audience. Could you please switch off all those devices because it interferes with the broadcasting of this Committee? Thank you. Sorry, I apologise. Please continue.

Sheldon Thomas

So, what I am doing is just going back to the beginning of how we started. Basically, we are all ex-gang members ourselves.

Chair

Sorry, could I just ask who is the person responsible for that? Could you please leave the gallery and finish your call outside or whatever you are doing? When it is completed come back in. Thank you.

Sheldon Thomas

As I was saying, we are all ex-gang members ourselves and we felt at the time there were quite a lot of shootings, a lot of stabbings that were going on at the time that I believe could have been prevented with more direct outreach approach.

Chair

Indeed. Roughly how many people would ring Gangsline every week or every month?

Sheldon Thomas

At that time it was quite a lot. We got about perhaps 15 to 20 phone calls on average. Now it is a lot more.

Chair

An average every week?

Sheldon Thomas

Every week.

Chair

Every week?

Sheldon Thomas

Yes, at that time it was quite a lot because of—

Chair

But now?

Sheldon Thomas

Now it has most probably tapered off. It is most probably about, again, perhaps 15 to 20 phone calls a week on average. People phoning us up, either gang members phoning us up themselves or their parents or their mothers phone us up saying that they are quite scared, they don’t know what to do. Some parents find guns in the house, “We’re not sure what to do”. So there are various reasons why, a lot of the time, people phone us.

Chair

Sure. We will explore some of these issues with other members of the Committee. You recently said that gang life is worse now than it has ever been, and you have criticised the bureaucrats and public sector workers who you say are driven by statistics and targets. That is pretty strong stuff. Why did you make those statements? Why do you think it is the case that it is worse than ever before?

Sheldon Thomas

I started gang life in 1976. I was 12 years old when I started my first gang in Brixton. At that time we started for a particular reason, which was to fight oppression, which was racist police officers and the National Front. We didn’t feel safe from them, so we started gangs. That is how it started. We got involved in criminality when we found that there was no justice for us as black men in London. We turned to criminality because we believed that the way to get society back was to rebel against society by doing crimes, i.e. selling of drugs. As time went on, we imploded. We then began to turn in on ourselves, so what started out as a social response then became a criminal response, then became an implosion of young black men turning against each other in the battle for the drugs and the profit from drugs. Obviously what we didn’t know as young men at the time was that the actual real people that were making drugs didn’t come from Brixton, Ensworth, Moss Side, Toxteth They lived in nice houses in areas where there were £2 million houses and they didn’t look like us, and those were the real people that were making money in the drugs game. But what happens is we get caught up thinking that we are making money because we are making more money than we would get if we were doing the nine to five jobs or anything like that. As time went on, we began to realise that no one was really taking an interest in the killings that were happening in the black community. I am not suggesting for one second that killings didn’t take place in the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets or in Tooting Bec or in parts of Ensworth. I am not suggesting that white young kids in Liverpool didn’t kill each other. What I am saying is that there was a disproportionate amount of young black men that were dying at the hands of other black men, and we believed that this country—or at that time—did not care enough about us dying. As we got older, some of us left that lifestyle; some of us died. I managed to get out of that lifestyle in 1986 after somebody was shot in the head next to me. So that was my turning point. Having seen that and come out of that lifestyle and going around the country myself into places like Moss Side, Toxteth, Norris Green, and seeing gangs from a different aspect, I began to realise that this was a bigger problem because the local council, the local authorities, didn’t really understand gangs, didn’t really care too much because the people involved were either black, some Asians or white working class.

Chair

So you think that the issue of black-on-black crime prevented others from being interested because they did not really care. That is why it went on for so long?

Sheldon Thomas

Yes. At the time that is what I solely believed. When the riots took place in 2011 in this country, in London, many gang members said to me, “How come that they’re interested in businesses that were burnt down but so many black kids died during those years before that, previously, and no one raised any campaign?” In fact, the only time they seemed—and this is what gang members have said—to raise any notice is when a white person actually died, Rhys Jones being the recent one. He died in Liverpool at the hands of another gang member from Liverpool. He was a young kid that wasn’t involved in gang life. Another one was Mizen. He died at the hands of a gang member. I am not suggesting that this country is promoting that they become interested in what is going on in the streets only when white people get killed, but if you look at it from a gang member’s point of view, especially if you are young and black, it would seem that there is some justification for why they felt during those times that you only seemed to be interested when something happens to another race.

Chair

We understand that point. Do you think that the figure that we have been given—we have been given figures of about 50,000 who are involved in gangs—is an accurate figure?

Sheldon Thomas

There may be more. In London alone there are 11,000 individual gang members. We refute what the police say because we do not believe that the police have a full understanding of who is in a gang from who isn’t in a gang. In fact, one of the things we have been trying to get the police to understand is that gangs are one unit today and tomorrow they are three different gangs fighting against each other. They are not like organised crime or organised criminal networks. They splinter very easily; they are very fragile; they are very vulnerable. What is a 30-man gang today becomes a 15-man gang tomorrow because they split into two by—

Chair

But you are putting the figure at about 11,000 people.

Sheldon Thomas

It is quite simple. If you look at the boroughs of east London and south London alone, in several boroughs in east London it is ranging from 700 to about 800 gang members in different areas. I won’t say the areas because they don’t like to hear that. The fact is that is what those figures are. So you can’t really say that there are only 3,000 gang members in London.

Chair

This is an assertion by the Metropolitan Police.

Sheldon Thomas

This is their belief.

Chair

Their figures, but you put it at three times higher?

Sheldon Thomas

I put it a lot higher in London. When you talk about outside of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool, Oldham, places like that that are entrenched in gangs as well, the figure goes up to more than 50,000.

Chair

Do you think the situation is getting worse?

Sheldon Thomas

I think the situation is getting worse because there are more younger people involved. An example was when I started my gang in 1976 it was unheard of for a 27 year-old gang member to give me a gun. Today, a 27 year-old gang member will give a 10 year-old a gun. Right now in certain boroughs in east London and south London we have young kids in primary schools who are not only selling drugs but holding weapons for them, one of the reasons being because they don’t get stopped and searched as regularly as a 13 or 14 year-old black and ethnic minority kid. What we are finding is that the local authorities and Government are always five years behind everything that is happening on the streets. One of the reasons why is that they don’t have people like myself on a regular basis giving them the right advice, because the people that give these Ministers and the Metropolitan Police advice normally don’t come from those kinds of communities. They have never had their life in those communities. Somebody like me has grown up in oppression, in social exclusion, as a marginalised young, black kid, and I have not only seen it for myself but have experienced murders, kidnaps, torture. So when you talk about those things from a different perspective, you put a different picture on it.

Chair

Indeed. That is why you are here. One final question from me on prevention: if there was one thing that you could do to prevent people joining gangs that we are not doing at the moment, what would that be?

Sheldon Thomas

I would go to the primary schools and the secondary schools. Unfortunately, the schools have become a law unto themselves. They have totally rejected gangs. They have not owned up to accepting that their schools have gangs. For instance, we have 23 boroughs that have gang activity in them.

Chair

In schools?

Sheldon Thomas

No, 23 boroughs. But within those boroughs we have several primary schools and secondary schools that have gang members in those schools. Yet the schools refuse to have organisations like ours and others go into the schools to educate them. The best time to change a young person or to give them that resilience, that skill to stop them from getting involved in gangs, is between the ages of seven and 11. Once they are entrenched, like some of the kids in the primary school now who are earning £40 a week selling drugs, if they don’t get caught the money goes up. If they don’t get caught again by the time they’re 15 they’re earning more than £400-£500. It is very difficult to pull them out of that cycle because that money becomes—

Chair

You would start it at primary school then.

Sheldon Thomas

I would start definitely in the primary schools.

Mr Winnick

I did mention to the previous witness the phrase “black on black”, which is unfortunate to say the least. Do you feel that the situation has somewhat changed? Perhaps previously, as you were explaining, less concern was expressed where the victim was black and the person who was causing the offence was black. Do you think that has now changed, so that there is not the what you would perhaps describe as indifference when it is black people apart from others who are involved in gangs, Asians or whites?

Sheldon Thomas

I think things have changed; it is a little bit better in the sense that they are now dealing with the gang issue on a wider scale. That is partly due to the ending gang violence strategy, which I am also a part of. But if I am to be honest with you, there has been a massive increase in African gang members in London, which has been completely underestimated, again because local authorities do not understand culturally what the situation is. A child who is from Congo, who is used to seeing civil unrest, villages being burnt down, comes here as a small child and for him to be involved in gangs is nothing. Countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone have wars, civil unrest that has been going on for decades. What I think is missing is that perhaps, whereas before they didn’t pay much attention to black-on-black violence, they are paying a little more attention but they still don’t understand the cultural differences. That is the biggest problem there because they don’t understand that we have a different dynamic involved in gangs. We have young men that don’t care anymore about the society that they are in because of where they are coming from. Most of these young men have no fathers. That has not been taken into consideration. We have a massive increase in the black community and in some of the white working class

Mr Winnick

In the black?

Sheldon Thomas

In the black community where 61% of fathers are missing. If you look at the white working class communities, in some of the deprived areas in Norris Green, Toxteth, Moss Side and Newham, we have a very high percentage of white men who are also missing, and I don’t think people understand that if kids do not have a proper role model, people won’t then understand the dynamics. Gangs is not just about whether it is black and black anymore. It is now about cultural differences. It is about understanding the cultural makeup of gangs and it is about understanding the social groups within these gangs, the difference it can make if you have a father who is in the house or a father who is not in the house.

Mr Winnick

In our communities it is quite common for fathers to be absent, in fact never appearing on the scene perhaps. Could more be done within those communities to try to change that situation, to try to encourage a very different social and parental responsibility?

Sheldon Thomas

I think local communities should be doing a lot more. Unfortunately, the local communities have a blame culture. They tend to blame the police. They tend to blame everybody else rather than look at what they are doing in society. When I was in a gang and I came out of gang life, I was made to look at myself and understand the part that I played in the way I was living my lifestyle. I think that local communities, unfortunately, are still in that kind of blame culture because they don’t want to accept what is happening. To a larger extent, a lot of the local communities have become desensitised to violence. In fact, we have some working class communities that would rather live with a guy that has committed murder, a guy that has committed rape, than turn them into the police. That is the level they will go to. So we are talking about communities that don’t face up to their own responsibilities, and the reason is because I don’t believe that many of them have the education or the moral fibre. I think what has happened is that when you have generation upon generation of worklessness, lawlessness, then what that just breeds is more lawlessness.

Mr Winnick

You have been very frank, Mr Thomas, in explaining how you became involved at a very early age in gang warfare and the circumstances that prevailed at the time, and the feeling of resentment and the racism that undoubtedly existed. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. How far are you able to impress upon others—the sort of people at the age you were when you became involved—that this is not the path to take, that it doesn’t lead anywhere except prison and then prison again?

Sheldon Thomas

One of the things we found is that when you are an ex-gang member you are likely to have more credibility than anyone else to impress upon young men and young women. Unfortunately, not everybody agrees with that form of mentoring or that form of work because people tend to think that the best person is somebody who has gone to university, studied youth work. Unfortunately, youth work doesn’t understand or take into account the experiences of gangs, the experience of what it means to live on an estate where your next door neighbour has no father, the next door neighbour doesn’t work, the next door neighbour is into drugs. They don’t take into account that kind of lifestyle, and I believe that when you are a gang member and you leave that lifestyle after a certain amount of years you are best placed to come down into local communities, hence why we started out as an outreach outfit, going into local communities as ex-gang members to educate those young men, to say to them, “This lifestyle doesn’t really work”. One of the examples I use is my own friends. I started out with a 25-man deep. That means I had 25 young men involved in my gang. This was in 1976, and the example that I give is that most of them are dead. One example I give is that one young man who refused to leave that lifestyle got shot 57 times. When I tell that story to young men they become horrified because they then begin to realise that what starts out and may look good, with the money, the car and the flash clothes, actually ends in tears. It doesn’t only end in tears but it ends with your family in tears. I think when you can paint those kinds of pictures you are more likely to reach hard core, hard to reach young men involved in this lifestyle.

Mr Winnick

Thank you.

Chair

Is it correct that you have employed ex-gang members in outreach work and mentoring work?

Sheldon Thomas

That is right.

Chair

Have they been an asset in doing so, almost like yourself?

Sheldon Thomas

They have been more than an asset, because they understand what some of the young people are going through. When you have a young man who has gone through a situation where he owes money to drug dealers and the drug dealer is going to shoot him or going to shoot his mum, we have workers who understand that because they have lived it themselves. So I think they are more than an asset.

Michael Ellis

Mr Thomas, thank you very much for the evidence you are giving today, and thank you for the work that you are doing in the community because it is clearly very valuable work. We appreciate it. Gangsline have been delivering interactive gang awareness workshops to schools. That is right, isn’t it?

Sheldon Thomas

Yes.

Michael Ellis

I am interested about that as well as the similar work that you have been doing with prisons, youth centres and the like, with the aim of prevention and intervention and deterrence, particularly the prevention issue. How can early intervention prevent gang membership? How would you recommend schools, for example, conduct themselves in educating young people? Is it bringing in people such as yourself to talk to classes? Is it some other mechanism? What would you recommend?

Sheldon Thomas

There are two ways of doing it. We offer a service of a gang mentor who can go into any school in any part of the country on a weekly basis. It is not a free service but we can offer that service. We also offer it as part of one of the lessons that they take every week, and it is a lesson that talks about life itself, life experiences. So we can implement within that. Also, we believe that by educating every year 7, year 8, for three or four years, we will see a real reduction in young men and women wanting to join because they are at that impressionable age. But what happens is they live on certain parts of estates, they live in certain areas where they are not getting a balance. What they are getting is every day they go home and they see a young man on the corner who is selling drugs. He is wearing the nice clothes and they get influenced by that. When they go in the home, because there is no dad and the mum may be struggling because she may have another child with another father, her attention on that young man or woman becomes very limited. He then looks for somebody else to be his father.

Michael Ellis

Can I just stop you there? I realise it is extremely complicated, but if you had to put one element of this as to the root issue of what causes these very young people—you are talking about 12, 13-year-olds—is it low self-esteem? Does it boil down to low self-esteem, for whatever reason, lack of parental guidance or absence?

Sheldon Thomas

I think that there is a combination. It is hard to put it down to one factor. I think it comes down to low self-esteem and vulnerability. Young children are very vulnerable now on these estates. They are so vulnerable it is untrue. I would say this as well—and I know people may not like this—that the music that some of these young people are listening to is promoting violence and sexual violence. I don’t think people understand the influence that music has on a 10 year-old, who is listening to a rapper who is actually saying to him, “It’s okay to smoke drugs. It’s okay to rebel against society”. I am not saying every rapper does that but there are a minority of rappers who sell millions of records who go around promoting this negative music, grime music, reggae MC and whatever they want to call it, bashment. They are promoting violence and sexually explicit lyrics that young people believe is life. They believe that.

Michael Ellis

They think it is cool.

Sheldon Thomas

Yes. They think it is not only cool; they think this is life itself. They build a world that runs parallel to your world and the world that you are in is far different to the world they are in. They are in a world that says, "You go against the grain. You go against society”. I know this because I did it myself and I know what it means to be a vulnerable child, even though I had my dad.

Michael Ellis

Do you think along the same lines that the violence in some computer games can be a negative influence as well?

Sheldon Thomas

I think any of those games that promote violence. There is a lot of games out there that young kids are playing such as Call of Duty 1, and anything that is against society should not be allowed. I know that is strong, because how can you stop games? How can you stop music? What we have to look at is, do we want to save the next generation or do we want to see them come up and be worse? I tell you this now, when I was in the gangs the killings that are happening today were not happening at my time, so the killings are getting worse. It tells me, as time goes on, violence is becoming worse because people are becoming more desensitised. As they become more desensitised their esteem becomes lower. They have low expectations of life itself. They have no purpose. They don't see what you saw at 11 years old, that you are maybe going to be an MP or a councillor; they don't see that. What they see is outside their block everybody is unemployed. They see that this estate doesn't look good, so they feel this is their lot in life. When you compound that with media music that is negative and with no role model in their lives that gives them a balanced view, we have got a problem on our hands. I think the resources that the Government has put towards this problem are nowhere near scratching the surface of what the resources should be.

Mark Reckless

Mr Thomas, you say that the murders are getting worse and you paint a very bleak picture. We can speak of statistics but whether we look at the British Crime Survey or whether we look at police-recorded crime, both have shown sharp falls. They are measures of young people that show that drug and alcohol consumption are sharply lower. Why is it that things are so much worse in your field?

Sheldon Thomas

We don't have a political agenda and people who do statistics normally have a political agenda. We know that next year, May, is coming up and so it is in the Government's interest to let everybody believe that crime is going down. When you work on the streets like me and many other organisations you see a different picture. You see crime going unreported. You see young people who get stabbed and who are not going to the hospitals any more. Why? Because if they go to the hospital the nurse has a duty to call the police if it is a stabbing or a shooting. They are not going to go. We have young girls who are raped. They don't even realise they have been raped. The ones who do realise they have been raped don't go to victim support or to organisations to report that. They don't go to anyone. We had several girls who have come to us—I'm not an expert on rape but they would rather come to us—and told me not to report it to the police. You have to understand that they don't trust the police. They don't trust society. I am not attacking the police, by the way. I am just telling you that the distrust that young people have from these communities towards establishment is severe. What we are not taking into account is that many of these young people who are not involved in this lifestyle are also caught up in it because they live in fear.

Mark Reckless

Mr Thomas, you mentioned underfunding, you allege. The sort of activities you do in terms of some outreach work and so on, is that something you are appealing for more money for, whether through local authorities and schools to the point—

Sheldon Thomas

Yes, that is something that we have always been appealing for because there is nothing better. When you speak to the gangs, one of the things they like about our service is that we came into their area that is considered a no-go area and they like that. But when there is no funding it is a bit difficult to continue that piece of work.

Mark Reckless

Finally, you said that as politicians we have a vested interest in playing down the level of crime. Do you not have a vested interest in playing up the level of gang violence?

Sheldon Thomas

Not necessarily, because I don't have an agenda. My agenda is quite clear: I just want to stop young people doing what I did many years ago and saving their lives and to live a purpose-filled life. My direction and my focus is quite straightforward. I will work with anyone who has an interest in saving lives but what I won't do is sit here and say how great things are, because they are not great. I work on the front line and, unfortunately, the picture I've painted here is just touching on the surface. I didn't want to scare you.

Paul Flynn

We are very grateful to you, Mr Thomas. You have given insights that none of us have had. You have had experiences that we have not shared and your evidence is extremely valuable. Can I go back to the time when you were a 13 year-old and imagine a 13 year-old in Brixton now? He is told that, "Your family life is not good. You can join a new family that are like you, that will look after you. You are going into danger. All young people love danger, they know they are all immortal. You will have wonderful people around you and your only chance of getting a Porsche by the time you are 18 is not to bother with this education rubbish but to join a gang". They will see around—they are not all being shot—there are very successful gang dealers who are very prosperous. How do you counteract a view like that when it is an appeal into their own community, their new family? Is that not an irresistible invitation even now?

Sheldon Thomas

It is irresistible, but one thing that is not happening is no one is telling these young people that the gang members lie. Most gang members lie through their front teeth. We have a very small number of gang members who make money, the money that we are talking about. This is where the police have done really well in shutting down places where drugs are coming in. These young men who are claiming they make a lot of money go on the YouTube videos and pretend. What happens is young people who cannot differentiate between what is a lie or what is fact or fiction end up believing the fiction. When I speak to gang members it is very hard for them to tell me how much money they make because they know that I will know that they are lying. The first thing we will notice is that, “If you were making that kind of money why do you still have the same trainers that you had on last year that have big holes in them?” It is a case of we have to begin to see through the lies, but it is hard for anybody to do that because you have to have the credibility on the street to be able to talk to a gang leader like that because in most cases you could get hurt.

Paul Flynn

Can you give us an example of any anti-drug education programme in the world or any anti-gang campaign in the world that has reduced crime and reduced drug use?

Sheldon Thomas

The Boston Ceasefire.

Paul Flynn

Fine. Could you tell us about it?

Sheldon Thomas

The Boston Ceasefire was done by a man called Dr David Kennedy who came up with this idea of seconding different organisations and agencies for one year and their whole purpose will be to tackle gangs from a different point of view. The point of view would be that they would get faith groups, local organisations, ex-gang members and police officers involved. What they would do is target particular gangs in Boston. At that time Boston had the highest homicide rate in America. Within the first year of doing that he reduced it by 50% and no one has ever done that. The only reason why that didn't continue was, again, because of funding. The Federal Government decided, "We're not going to fund this project anymore". You have to ask yourself: why would you stop funding a project that was so successful in saving the lives of many young men?

Paul Flynn

A final question, if the Government gave you a big bag of money tomorrow, millions and millions, how would you spend it?

Sheldon Thomas

Prevention in the primary schools, prevention in the secondary schools, and I would look at the estates where we would go out and engage with them, like you do in outreach. Those are the most important things right now and training statutory organisations to understand gangs from a different perspective.

Paul Flynn

Thank you very much, Mr Thomas.

Mr Clappison

So as to get the full picture on this, you have seen the scene for a while but I am curious, what happens when gang members get a bit older, when they get to their 30s and 40s? How do they come to leave the gangs and what happens then?

Sheldon Thomas

Many of them leave because, like music, they become not respected because there is a word that goes around on the streets called wasteman. In other words, you are seen as a joke if you are still on the street selling drugs at 30 years old. They don't respect that because what they are saying is, "You should have made enough money to come out of that lifestyle altogether". That is one. The other thing is many of them end up broke. If you look at the average 30 year-old guy who was maybe a main man 15, 20 years ago, he has no money to his name now. We deal with a lot of them. They have no money. Most of them end up coming out of that lifestyle because they have no money. Everything has been taken from them. Their liberty has been taken. They have gone in and out of jail and so they just come out of gang life themselves. There are two ways of looking at that, normally. What do they bring to society? Do they bring anything to this society? Not necessarily. They will most probably end up signing on. If they are not signing on, they end up doing bits and bobs, hustling, that means doing little things on the streets, maybe not in the same way they were doing it before. For them life is kind of pretty over because unless they radically change before that or during that time they end up to be seen as a joke within their own community, and that happens to quite a lot of older guys who don't change when the time is right.

Nicola Blackwood

If I understand you correctly, what you are essentially saying is that if you survive until 30 you then manage to escape the gang, more or less, by the nature of the gang structure. One of the pieces of evidence that we have here is about mental health and a study that was done by Professor Coid who found that 85.8% had an antisocial personality disorder, 25.1% had psychosis, 58.9% had anxiety disorder and 34.2% had attempted suicide. A lot of this was to do with the trauma experience, and you mentioned a lot of this when you said that many were stabbed but didn't go to seek assistance, shot, many were raped but didn't recognise it as rape. In your experience, do you think that many gang members are experiencing this level of mental illness?

Sheldon Thomas

Definitely.

Nicola Blackwood

Do you think there are any statutory agencies that are even coming close to addressing that?

Sheldon Thomas

I would say, first, that study, that research, that report that you are reading is 100% correct. I would even go as far as this, that the figures are most probably worse, especially in the black community. I would also say that we are struggling to have any one organisation deal with that in a way because, again, it is part of the work of gangs that no one has explored: how do we help those young men or those adults who end up in this particular situation? Unfortunately, again, it comes down to what I was saying before about resources. People are finding that there are no resources to do that piece of work. The statutory sector would struggle to do it because most statutory workers—and I hope I don't sound like I am generalising—don't come from the background of understanding gangs or that mentality. You would need somebody who understands it and has that kind of therapeutic understanding of how to deal with it from a mental issue side. We are a long way off from ironing that out or from managing that situation.

Nicola Blackwood

You have already spoken a lot about suspicion of establishment within gang members. What would be your assessment of gang members' attitudes to recognising mental illness within themselves and seeking any help for it if they did recognise it?

Sheldon Thomas

Gang members, for the most part, are young men who are scared. I say that because I was one of those young men who was scared and we put on a bravado image so that we lock people out from knowing who we are or from people understanding that we are vulnerable. Gang members have the same mentality when it comes to dealing with those kind of issues. They don't deal with it. They don't talk about it because for them it is about locking everybody out of that little world within themselves. They don't have the coping strategies to dealing with that kind of understanding. I can tell you a story of a gang member who went to his gang leader and the gang leader asked him what was wrong. When he began to tell him what was wrong, which were all these issues that you are talking about, the gang leader had a fit and then he passed out. It was just like he didn't want to deal with it. He didn't want to know. This is a gang leader who is working with this young man to make money and he just didn't want to know. We are a long way off from dealing with it. Any one organisation, whether it be voluntary or statutory, is a long way off from dealing with that.

Nicola Blackwood

The second area relates to this distrust of establishment. There has been lots of debate about stop and search and about the problems it causes in terms of distrust with the disproportionate targeting of young black men in particular and also the problems with gangs perhaps choosing to use women and younger gang members to carry, simply because they are less likely to be targeted for stop and search. The Home Office has announced its intention to reform stop and search. It said it is going to consider the issue of girls being used. What is your response to that? Do you think that those proposals will address it and do you think that there are other concerns that need to be considered?

Sheldon Thomas

I was 12 when I started a gang in 1976 under the sus law, one of the worst things that ever happened in this country that specifically just targeted black men. How many black men feel today is how black men felt back then; things have not changed in that time period. People need to understand that the black community has been waiting for the Metropolitan Police to change for some time. They haven't seen that change. They haven't seen a sustainable approach to recruiting black men. They haven't seen an approach where black men get into very top senior positions. They haven't seen a change in the way young black men are targeted on the streets in terms of stop and search. If they hear their older brothers or their older, older brothers talk about the 1970s and 1980s and then they talk about what is happening now, in their estimation they would say, "Well, nothing has changed". We all know that things have changed within the police. I would say that things have changed but they haven't changed fast enough and they haven’t changed anywhere near the level they should have changed. For many young black men today there is no faith in the police because they say to themselves, "How can you believe in something that can’t recruit black men and bring them into position for a decision-making role where the community can respect that?"

Nicola Blackwood

Even though the Metropolitan Police can demonstrate that they have reduced their stop and search and they are improving their figures and the Home Office has announced that they are reforming specifically to address some of these issues because they are concerned about the disproportionate targeting of black men with stop and search—they are not stopping the stop and search, they are going to review all legislation to root out where these problems are occurring—do you think that recruitment of BME candidates into the Metropolitan Police is going to be the clearest demonstration of commitment to the community?

Sheldon Thomas

If the black community saw over the last 10 years a serious recruitment of black men in the police and moving up the ladder, reaching top positions, that would do more than all of this talk about we are going to review the stop and search. It is because everything goes by what they see. We can talk all the statistics we want but young men, and especially young black men that we are talking about, go by what they see. If they can't see black men in the police force in top positions they will never have faith in the police because in their eyes nothing has changed since the 1970s, so that is the way we have to look at it.

Chair

The idea of role models, which you have just mentioned to Nicola Blackwood, is extremely important, isn't it, for people to identify that there are no barriers to prevent young black men and young black girls reaching the very top? But is there a specific policing area that you think should change in respect to dealing with gangs, a specific power that they are using? You have mentioned stop and search but is there anything else they can do? You have been an adviser to Trident and also to New Scotland Yard. You have advised a number of London boroughs. Our next witness is the Deputy Commissioner who is coming to talk about other things but I am sure we will want to explore some of these issues with him. If you were giving advice, how can the police change the way in which they police London or other cities to make it easier for us to break up this gang culture?

Sheldon Thomas

In 1976 we had a policeman called PC White. He was the only policeman that never said a racist word to us on the Angell Town Estate, never spoke one racist word. He treated us with such respect and we never got more respect like that ever. The day when he left Angell Town is when everything fell apart. Unless police begin to understand cultures, the different cultures, what we are about, more friendly, nothing is going to change. PC White demonstrated in 1976 that there is nothing wrong with just being nice to young men.

Chair

You have given us a Home Office initiative that requires no money, a change of attitude; it is just attitude.

Sheldon Thomas

Yes. It is just the attitude has to change. Police need to understand that there is nothing wrong in being friendly. I remember the time we were smoking a spliff and PC White came up and he said, "Come on, come on, lads, you know you can't do that" and we threw it away.

Chair

What has become of this paragon of virtue? Where is PC White now? He didn't make it to Commissioner.

Sheldon Thomas

No, he didn't make it to Commissioner. But the point of what I'm saying is this—

Chair

Do you know where he is?

Sheldon Thomas

No, I was so young. The point I am making is that I don't understand why police just cannot be friendly, go down to certain areas in Hackney or Newham and just have a conversation. You don't need to look at everyone as a gangster, everyone as, "Oh well, you're in this gang". Okay, so what if they are in a gang? You can have a conversation with them. I just think if the police's attitude changed, which doesn't cost any money, we can begin to see inroads in trust being built.

Chair

Indeed. Just one question on schools. You mentioned that it should start at primary school level and you talked about the critical age group of seven to 11. Do you think that it is worth doing work at preschool level as well or do you think we can—

Sheldon Thomas

I think seven is the best age because of their level of understanding and stuff is slightly different. I think seven is about the right age to start working with them. I am not just talking about gangs, I am talking about what it is like to be an adult. We have many young men who are fathering children at 14 years old who have no understanding what it means to go and have sex with a young girl, and then she gets pregnant and he just goes off with another girl and does the same thing. I think that the whole structure of school has to change because we are in a climate of media throwing these images to them of bad parenting, and we have to say bad parenting. There is no point pretending otherwise, and there are some parents who are trying to do their best but are struggling. We need to look at how we can impact the lives of these young men and women so that they don't make mistakes at 14, 15 of having a child. What happens is that having a child at 14 with no external family to look after them, to help you to raise that child, not only becomes a burden on society but the child's chances of being successful is so limited. I don't think we understand that. It isn't just about me or other organisations going in and talking about gangs. It is about what happens if you do have sex at 14 and you don't have the right necessary precautions: what happens when that girl gets pregnant or what are you going to do? These are important issues that people have to look at because in our neighbourhoods teenage pregnancy is rife. These kids grow up to be the gangsters, not every child but they grow up to be the gangsters. As we change the way young people think, unless we change the way we teach in schools about life itself we are not going to change the culture of gangs or violence.

Chair

Mr Thomas, thank you very much for giving evidence to us today. It has been extremely helpful and we may well come back to you during the course of our inquiry to ask you further questions or for help in the way in which we conduct our inquiry. We are most grateful. Thank you very much. Gangs and youth crime, HC 199 6 [1] Note by witness: In this I said 2,409 girls were sexually exploited. The Children’s Commissioner figure was actually for both genders, although the overwhelming majority were girls.