“Knife crime is just fashion”: Anti-knife crime campaigner as zombie knife ban looms

National World - LocalTV

The prime minister has pledged to double down on knife crime. They're now considering a further ban on ninja swords as well as legislation designed to make it harder for potential offenders to buy dangerous weapons online.

Transcript

00:00The difference between when I was a kid and you as a kid is we didn't care what a rival

00:05group of people were doing unless we bumped into them or saw them.

00:08But because of social media, there's only one thing that changes on the way that kids

00:13in this sort of like demographic, you know, knife crime, drug abuse, drug dealing, there's

00:19only one thing that changes, and it's the accent.

00:22That's it.

00:23They're all brainwashed.

00:24They all listen to the same drill music, all want to be the same person, all shop at the

00:28same places, all use the same slang words, ain't that weird?

00:33And that shows you that knife crime is fashion.

00:36John Joe Highton sustained serious injuries when he was first involved in a knife attack.

00:41He miraculously survived.

00:42And I remember thinking to myself, what am I going to tell my mum?

00:45Because obviously he's screaming in the back, and I'm shouting, you're going to be okay,

00:50listen, mum's on her way, everything's going to be all right, listen, your dad's soon on

00:53his way, everything's going to be okay, all this stuff that you'd normally shout, but

00:57you'd never think you'd have to do it.

00:59But he wasn't so lucky in August 2014, when he was attacked again when he was just 18.

01:04John Joe died at the scene.

01:06My brother's body was probably 10 metres away in the ambulance.

01:12You could see they were trying to hide the blood and stuff.

01:14I was crying, my mum was crying, and a very good police officer friend of mine put the

01:20brolly over my head, and I said, please let me see him, and he won't let me see him, and

01:23I had to say bye to the ambulance.

01:25His older brother Byron is now a multi-award winning anti-knife crime campaigner, spreading

01:29his message that knife crime doesn't just affect certain groups of people, and explaining

01:34why he thinks it's now a bigger problem than ever.

01:37The pressure of social media.

01:40Social media causes anxiety, depression, suicide and violence in adults, let alone the catastrophic

01:45damage it does to children.

01:47It's crazy, isn't it?

01:48They're all just brainwashed to act in the way that another set of people are.

01:52And then a new slang word comes out, a new drug comes out, a new term comes out, a new

01:56thing to do, and they all seem to do it.

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