A charity is helping tackle the impact of knife crime in Greater Manchester – by teaching youngsters emergency first aid.
StreetDoctors has trained more than 22,000 people across the country, and hundreds across our region, lifesaving skills to help them treat someone who has been stabbed, cut or knocked out.
Knife crime remains a huge issue in the UK, with 40,000 incidents in England and Wales last year.
And Lucie Russell, CEO of StreetDoctors which formed in 2008, said: “StreetDoctors works with young people affected by violence in Manchester and across the UK, training them in how to save the life of someone who has been stabbed or knocked out and enabling them to better understand the consequences of violence.
“Our Manchester based young healthcare volunteers deliver this vital training through a network of local youth partners, including the police, enabling us to work directly with young people to empower them to become a key part of the solution to reducing violence.”
Last month, Greater Manchester Police launched a region-wide clampdown to tackle increasing knife crime in the area.
As part of Operation Sceptre, officers undertook a range of activities to target offenders, including erecting knife-detecting arches at Edge Lane tram stop in Droylsden where a 13-year-old boy was stabbed in the chest last year.
Ms Russell added: “Knife crime has devastating impacts on young people, their friends, families, and wider communities too, as a result of the ripple effect of the trauma of experiencing violence.
“That’s why Operation Sceptre is a vital part of the response, in particular its emphasis on partnership working to tackle the systemic causes of street violence, as well as its traumatic impacts.
“Tackling knife crime is a child protection as well as an enforcement issue, as so many young people are caught up in exploitation in relation to violence, so it’s really important that the Manchester police force continue to act on this, alongside their partners.”
The StreetDoctors Impact report for 2021 revealed that after attending StreetDoctors training 95% of young people know what to do if someone is bleeding and 89% would be willing to act.
Superintendent Caroline Hemingway, GMP’s knife crime lead, said the force work closely with organisations like StreetDoctors to help make Manchester a safer place.
She said: “We are committed to proactively targeting knife crime hotspots within the community using stop search – where appropriate, weapons sweeps, knife arches, and covert and overt policing deployments, and investigative work to target those involved with knife crime.”
Their initiatives have seen more than 10,000 weapons seized across Greater Manchester, she added.
The Ben Kinsella Trust, another charity aiming to tackle knife crime, was set up after a teenager was stabbed to death in Islington after celebrating GCSE results in his local pub in Islington in 2008.
CEO of the Ben Kinsella Trust, Patrick Green, said: “Ben was a 16-year-old schoolboy who was murdered in an unprovoked attack as he walked home from a night out with friends. His family set the trust up in his name.
“Three months before Ben’s murder he had written to the Prime Minister at the time, challenging the government over what he felt was inaction to protect young people.”
The charity’s data revealed that 49,991 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument were recorded by police in 12 months to June 22. Of these, 235 resulted in murder, 27 of those killed were teenagers. This is the largest percentage increase in knife crime offences since 2019.
The charity’s vision is of a society where no family or community should suffer the loss of a life to knife crime.
Superintendent Hemingway of GMP said: “I would like to urge those who even think about carrying a knife to take a moment and realise how many people may be affected by your actions.
“You won’t only be hurting someone else – you’ll also be hurting yourself as my officers are actively targeting those involved in knife crime and will use all manners at their disposal to bring you to justice.”
GMP are urging people to surrender weapons if they are in possession of them at one of the 13 Forever Amnesty bins located across Greater Manchester.
