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It is the apparent casualness of the act that so shocks. Outside a branch of McDonald's in suburban Neasden, a gang of boys, some as young as 13, repeatedly shot two teenage brothers for their iPods and other valuables. For a city, and a Mayor, still struggling to comprehend last year's grim statistics - 27 London teenagers were violently killed in 2008 - it's an incident that marks another low in the capital's fight against teen crime.
Early reports suggest that the perpetrators come from the Chalk Hill Estate in Neasden - and it's primarily on London's largest estates that boys, and increasingly girls, are seemingly sucked into a relentless culture of violence. Many smoke skunk, the drug of choice, and few are untouched by a pernicious peer pressure that forces some into a life of spiralling petty crime.
Alec Passam, a 16-year-old from Hackney, started carrying a weapon two years ago because he was "scared". "You walk out of your house," he tells me, "and you see lots of kids clutching their waists or with their hands in their pockets or their sleeves over their hands and it's like, you don't know where to turn to be safe."
Most of the kids on his large council estate have a knife, and some who regularly carry them are as young as 12. Remarkably, Alec has seen plenty of guns, though has never carried one himself. "I've always associated guns with the Army but then I see a kid walking along with a gun at his waist, and you just think, hang on, that's wrong." Even children, police believe, are now able to buy a firearm for as little as £100.
Almost all the kids also know at least one young person who has died as a result of teenage violence. Alec was "good friends" with both Shaquille Maitland-Smith, the 14-year-old killed by a gang on BMX bikes in September last year, and 16-year-old Ahmed Benyermak, who fell from a seventh-floor balcony on a Hackney estate in August while fleeing a gang with knives.
Perhaps the greatest problem these children face is the invasion of public spaces by troublemakers and gangs. Alec used to play football in a local Hackney park but says it has now become a no-go area for children over the age of 10.
"Nowadays it's where kids drive stolen motorbikes. A lot of robberies happen there. If you were, say, 13, they'd go for you straight away. They come up to you, ask your age and then say: what you got for me? If you say nothing, they just search you. Not like a police search - they punch you, grab your throat and take whatever you got. Not just phones or iPods, but bus passes, lighters." Other council estates are out of bounds, too. "Even if the road between two estates was an inch wide," he says, "the second you cross that line and step into another estate, you're most likely to get hurt. [The gangs] know everybody." Ironically, given the latest incident in Neasden, the only place to meet friends from other estates, he says, are "crowded places like McDonald's or Foot Locker, where no one will come in and get you".
The police are very active in Alec's part of Hackney but the kids are wise to their methods. "People become more aware of how the police work. They don't carry a weapon in a crowded place because they'll no doubt be stopped and searched." Alec refuses to divulge gang methods but police believe that weapons, including guns, are often hidden around the area and retrieved by teenagers after dark.
"It's easier to get a knife than a packet of crisps," Alec goes on. "It's getting worse and worse, especially with the younger kids. Eventually it's going to be just too bad for the police ever to stop."
Yet Alec also offers hope. He is one of the brave ones who has given up his life of violence, drugs and crime and, with the help of an unsung youth charity called Fairbridge, opted for college, the cadets and a normal working future. If there is a model for the rehabilitation of some of London's worst-offending teens, perhaps Alec Passam is it.
It has been a gradual, even painful, process, culminating in the day he threw his knife into the canal. "I saw someone get stabbed," he says quietly, "though I don't know why it happened - some stupid reason like the colour of the guy's shoes. I remember feeling very confused. That same day I threw my weapon away. I wanted it right away from me. And I wanted to make sure no one else could get hold of it."
Alec's troubles seem to date back to his very early childhood - he and his elder brother were removed from their parents at the age of five and seven, and he has had no contact with his parents since. Fortunately, he was placed with his aunt and uncle, a caterer and a florist - hard-working people who tried their best to keep the boys out of trouble.
Yet Alec, a lanky teenager who still finds it hard to look strangers directly in the eye, describes his old childhood self as always up for a fight. "I was angry that they took me away, I suppose. As I got older that anger started to get greater, and then the gang violence started." Secondary school was "like a big boxing ring".
"Everyone was my enemy - teachers, students. The only way to stop me was to lock me in a room to calm down." When he landed a punch on a teacher the school's headmaster offered him a choice: Fairbridge or expulsion.
Before Fairbridge, Alec was smoking cannabis and sometimes the dangerously powerful skunk at least once a day. "We'd bunk off school and do it, or do it at lunchtime and then go back. Of course the effect was that I just couldn't be bothered."
It is not always easy to persuade kids to attend twice-weekly sessions at a Fairbridge centre. The charity's present venue in Hackney is run-down, freezing and barely equipped (it is desperately seeking new accommodation). "I pretty much felt like a sell-out," says Alec. "The first time I came, I was very scared 'cos there were loads of kids I recognised."
It often takes weeks to make the youths commit to Fairbridge. After his first morning, Alec and his friends rode stolen bicycles "very very fast" down a busy pavement, lashing out at random passers-by. He's now deeply ashamed of this "wild, stupid" behaviour but a year ago it was a standard form of entertainment. "If I needed a bike, I'd just snip a wire lock and off we'd go," he says.
Alec was "on the giving and the receiving" end of several "really, really bad beatings", and he even stole a few cars. "But mostly we'd steal things from cars. You smash a window, run around the corner then come back. We'd take anything. We didn't need it, we just did it."
Peer pressure plays an enormous part in this kind of crime. "If your gang leader calls you up and says I need you to rob this pedal bike, you can't say: ah, I'm not feeling well, I'm too tired. You have to do it. Even if it's 1am, you have to get up, get dressed and rob the bike." Other forms of "testing" include submitting to a beating from members of your own gang, he says.
And what of the parents? Either they don't know what's going on - "you go out the door in your normal clothes, but round the corner you put on your bandana or your balaclava or whatever represents your gang" - or, remarkably, they are "too scared" to confront their children. In any case, allegiance to the gang often overrides family influence.
Yet Alec did return to Fairbridge, pushed by his aunt, and credits it with turning his life around. "I'd have been in prison now if I hadn't gone back."
Occasionally, talking to him, I catch glimpses of what might be described as a lost childhood, a kind of innocence or simply age-appropriate attitude that's otherwise hidden beneath a very adult appreciation of danger. These are the hooks that Fairbridge use to reel kids back into a life of 'normal' teenagehood. The charity owns a 92-foot tall ship called Spirit of Fairbridge which is berthed at the Port of Glasgow, and after a certain number of courses, kids from all over the country are offered a trip aboard.
At first Alec didn't want to go. "But the ship was so big, it was amazing. It wasn't like a holiday, it was really hard work, but being on that ship gave me time to think. I could adjust myself away from the city and the violence. One day, if I'm rich enough, I'd love a place up there in Scotland. It was so peaceful."
When I ask him to describe the difference between the team on the ship and a gang on an estate, he gets what I mean immediately.
"The gang is a team, and yeah it's a brotherhood. You can trust them on most things. But if you're ever in trouble with the law, or with a bigger gang, they'll abandon you. The difference is, on the boat everyone sticks together whatever happens. Especially if you're in trouble. Then someone will say: 'Let me help you with that, let me show you.'"
Fairbridge helped him study, and he passed four GCSEs. Nowadays, he even likes Shakespeare. He is taking a childcare course at college, but has also applied to join the Royal Marines. For the first time, he is taking an interest in current affairs, and as we chat he suddenly says something startling.
"It's like England has two wars. There's the war in Afghanistan and the war on the streets. Everyone is monitoring what's going on in Afghanistan closely and when people die it's very sad. But on the streets, people are too scared to look that close."
He thinks he and the boys in Hackney like him have been forgotten. And when you listen to him, and others, describe lives of appalling pressure unmediated by adult influence, of severely limited opportunity beyond the estate, and of the constant risk of violence, you can't help but think he's right.
Reader views (6)
I agree with Debbie from Islington - if all the Londoners who talk and think about about Fairbridge as "they" were to make the word "us" by contributing something (either by way of donation or work as a volunteer) to Fairbridge or other good organisations tackling these issues and helping youngsters living such tough lives,then we would really help to make a difference to our in many ways wonderful city.
- Sally, London
Alex, your story was the real truth everyone in this city needs, to pull together and save a generation that are quite literally fighting against themselves.
Fairbridge and other charities, don't get the recognition and support they need and deserve.
Thank goodness they are saving some of London's teenagers.
Alex - let's hope your peers turn to you as an inspiration, and admire you for what you have done.
- Hannah Hollings, Brixton, London
drugs, mainly crack cocaine is now rife in my borough, i mean kids that carry guns. Politicians wake up, these are not isolated cases no longer, London needs proper policing.
- John, dagenham
I think its time that we all took our heads out of the sand. And really start listening to what these young people have to say. It is a war out there for them. Everyday they are trying to escape a minefield of abuse and usually from each other. I think there are opportunities for these kids, we just have to show that we care enough to help them achieve a life that's worth living.
- Debbie Islington, London
Alex - Your story brought tears to my eyes. I hope you do inspire other boys as you certainly should do. Good luck to you, I'm sure you will be able to have the sort of life you want and deserve.
- Sarah Bradshaw, Enfield, Middx
Who values teenagers?
Who values what they can do?
Who takes an interest?
Who gives them a role?
From 14 to 20 or so, people feel adult, but for all too many there's no niche for them in adult society. No wonder the gangs thrive - about the only people who take an interest in younger teenagers are older ones.
- Colin, London UK
