BRITAIN:More armed officers are to be deployed to gun crime hot spots as part of a new task force established by the Metropolitan Police in urgent response to a spate of fatal shootings in south London.
Three teenage boys have died in the last fortnight in the shootings which have shocked police and prompted a warning from Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair that a "new trend" is emerging of young teenagers being involved in killings and serious violent crime.
Sir Ian met senior officers from the Met's specialist crime directorate yesterday before announcing the new task force, which will run alongside Operation Trident, which investigates gun crime in London's Afro-Caribbean community.
Sir Ian promised high-visibility patrols by armed officers to reassure worried communities, ahead of a meeting with community leaders, advisory groups and London mayor Ken Livingstone's representative at Scotland Yard today.
Sir Ian also confirmed that he had asked home secretary John Reid to consider lowering the age at which a mandatory five-year prison sentence could be imposed for carrying a firearm, from 21 years to 17.
His overall message, he said, was one of sympathy for the families caught up in the recent shootings and an "absolute determination" to stop the situation escalating. "What they are is entirely unacceptable to the communities of London."
He was speaking after the murder on Wednesday afternoon of Billy Cox (15), who was shot dead in his home in north Clapham.
A man was arrested yesterday in connection with the killing of Michael Dosunmu (15) in the bedroom of his home in Peckham on February 6th. Just three days before that, James Andre Smartt-Ford (16) died after he was shot at the Streatham ice arena.
Sir Ian said yesterday that while there was "no evidence that all of these crimes are linked" there were "some evidential leads" linking some of them.
Labour deputy-leadership contender Harriet Harman, MP for Camberwell and Peckham, said it was important that those getting involved in such crimes should know "they are not more powerful than the law".
She feared this "sense of a sort of culture of impunity amongst the gangs" was motivating young people to the point "where a gun has become almost a status symbol demanding respect and authority".
Sir Ian suggested a huge number of factors were behind what he identified as this "new trend", only some of which had to do with policing.
"This is not just an enforcement issue," he said, "the problem is more complex. There are an awful lot of different forms of deprivation that are connected."