It's very, very difficult for a young person to be growing up in Newham because it is a war zone.
The amount of young people have lost their lives, it'd be wrong for us not to call it a war zone,
you know, that was just simply denying the problem and putting a plaster over a big stab wound.
It's not going to fix it.
You need surgery, it really does and this is what we're doing.
We're doing specific surgery to a very, very big wound that needs to be fixed.
When they look at me, they see stereotype. When they look at you, they see stereotype.
That's something that we can't shake off but what we can do
is change their hearts and minds through what we say and what we do,
you know, and that's the only thing we can do, prove them wrong with our success.
Nothing's going to stop you from achieving it, only yourself and the time that you put in.
You start off at the bottom and you work your way up and down the bottom,
and you learn how to do it the basic way.
Everything else just kind of falls into place.
When they say it's going to trickle down, nothing's trickling down,
the only thing that's trickling down is blood down people's bodies.
That's it. The only thing that we see trickling down is blood
and that ends up on the community.
There ain't nothing but that. Nothing is trickling down.
Why would you want to have a police officer outside the school? Why? Why?
Do you have that outside those rich schools in affluent areas?
This is where I found an actual sawed-off shotgun.
How old were you?
I was no more than about, I'd say, about nine years old and it was just over here
wrapped up in the bag and being a kid, I started trying to put stones in it and
thinking that it would work.
I was a kid at the time.
I broke the shotgun.
Look around like, 360, all you're seeing is social deprivation, tower blocks and tower blocks.
You've got a small opening over there with a ... you can see a bit of sky but the rest of it is just
tower block, you know, and this is where my youth was when I was growing up.
You don't see kids playing out in this area and there's a very, very important reason why.
The issue with alcohol, the issue with gambling, the issue with knife crime ... when you start seeing these problems
in the community and you're asking yourself as a parent why would you allow your child
to be out in an environment that's just so hostile and so dangerous and it's just rife.
Would you let your child grow up or play out in this area?
I know where I'm from, I know where I came from, I know what it means to have skin colour,
I'm really proud to have the values that I have and those values didn't come easy.
It come at a cost and I had to lose my freedom, be put in prison for me to change my life
and to make that conscious decision.
I just hope that people can make that conscious decision
before they commit a crime and before they go to prison and before they do these things.
It's a different world we're living in to the one I grew up in.
There is nowhere for the youth to go, the youth clubs have all shut down,
we need something like this to for the kids them to see and
that there is someone there for them that truly is there for them.
I lost my son a few years back from knife crime, stabbed to death.
Maybe if this was open when my son was there probably wouldn't be in position we are in.
There's a massive responsibility to make sure that he/she doesn't pick up one of these again and
that in the wrong hands can do so much damage.
Just takes one poke from this in the wrong place and that's it.
Right now a lot of these young people are acting in vengeance.
A retaliation is a must and that's something that's the word on the street.
Retaliation is a must and it's not a joke.
You could turn a corner and Newham is very notorious
for that, where you could turn a corner and all your enemies happen to be there
and they're all brandishing weapons.
They're called ride outs, where your enemies go look
for you so young people who don't want to be caught it's called slipping, caught lacking.
They don't want to be caught off guard and young people see this as a form of protection
and also to gain status to earn ratings. It's not the way about it, literally.
This will then take you two places either in prison or in the ground.
Thank you so, so much. Thank you.
It's just got to the stage where everyone's become desensitised.
It's normality and
to me death trauma and death for murder, that shouldn't be normality,
that should be frightening.
Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan, Home Office, Cressida Dick, customs,
do you think when you've got things like this that can be legally brought and all you've got to do is
be 18 and provide no documentation of a purpose of why you need this that we're not going to have the
problems we're having with knife crime.
are you listening?
How is it out here? Like, how is a retailer making
it get into the community? You can't tell me that one of these knives haven't killed a person and
these retailers are aware that that's happened, do you know what i'm saying?
And to be able to sell that to the community, I'm just thinking like, it's real cold-hearted.
You know the bigger picture, the bigger picture is this that, if you were to start your own knife manufacturing outlet call
it a hunting or survival store and you were to sell those weapons you would be called a gang.
Yeah, 100%.
If I'd done it, I'll be called a terrorist. – 100%.
But why if a white person does it, it's called a business?
Yeah, it's facts, though.
... and when you learn the trade and you learn the skills and you've got the CSCS card,
you can step aside and start making your own people, you know what i'm saying?
Taking on jobs yourself.
When you've got your purpose and you've got your goal, you don't have to look back.
And then you'll see people come to you and ask you how you've done it so they can go off and do the
same things, you know what I'm saying?
It's crazy how the world changes when you're on the path of
success and when you start becoming successful, you start working towards something positive,
the world changes and you look at the world differently.
Not long bro, you'll be up.
Right, so that's out of the way.