Met to hold 'summit' with gunmen

The US-style "ceasefire" summits are an attempt to curb the city's gun culture which claimed its 23rd teenage victim in 11 months, a 17-year-old boy, two days ago.

In the unprecedented move, gang members will be summoned to meet police, leaders of the local community and other officials.

They will be told to stop the violence and tit-for-tat killings or face a zero-tolerance crackdown in a radical plan codenamed Operation Alliance being launched by Scotland Yard.

A total of 171 gun gangs with members as young as 13 have been identified by the Met. Seven armed groups from five south London boroughs - Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich and Croydon - are being tackled in the first phase of the war on gangs.

Individual gang members will be offered exit strategies. Other initiatives include civilian mediators on 24/7 call to act as go-betweens in disputes.

Police are also planning civil injunctions to prevent gang members from associating, while parents of gang members will be offered "good behaviour" contracts.

The tactics have proved successful in tackling gangs in the United States. In particular, officers in London plan a version of Operation Ceasefire launched in Boston in the Eighties to curb gang warfare which led to the deaths of 73 young people in one year.

Commander Shaun Sawyer, head of the Yard's Violent Crime Directorate, said: "A crucial part is the involvement of the community who are saying, 'We do not want you to rip this place apart any more'. We are realistic. We know we cannot go back to the 1950s.

"But we can lower the bar of violence, reduce the levels of violence and stop the random attacks which are leading to the deaths of young people.

"If they do not listen and there is another murder then we tell them we will make their neighbourhood a very difficult place to live."

Violent offences involving young people aged from 10 to 19 have fallen by 18 per cent this year but police are seriously concerned about the rise in the number of teenagers being murdered, the majority in gang conflicts.

Superintendent David Chinchen, who is in charge of Operation Alliance, said: "In London we are nowhere near, and I do not think we will ever be near, the gang situation they have in Los Angeles or other big US cities.

"There is nothing like the firepower here that the US gangs have and we are not seeing gangs take over entire plots of the city as they do. We are talking about small groups of individuals who are involved in violent crime."

Mr Chinchen said: "If they are doing anything that we feel is a criminal offence then we will target them for that. We are also using tactics that might not be normally be available to the police such as local authority powers."