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Teenagers fear streets of violence
STABBINGS, physical and verbal abuse and motorcycle chain fighting.
These are just some of the vicious outbreaks of terror seen by Blackpool young people in their time growing up
And resort teenagers say things are only getting worse.
Gang warfare in London has seen young people stabbed to death while three men in Greater Manchester were fatally injured in knife attacks in the last week alone.
Sadly, in some areas, it has become a part of our young people's culture.
Blackpool may not be the mean streets of urban gangland, but local children are fully aware of the threat.
But students spoken to by The Gazette said they would not want to see extra security at schools as it would increase levels of fear among pupils.
Blackpool Sixth Form College student Jenny Rhymes,16, from Blackpool lived in Spain where youths her age were regularly involved in fights with motorcycle chains
She added: "It's getting harder to get knives, I used to work at Marks & Spencer where an alarm rings for every knife sale telling check out operators to confirm the age of the customer."
Becky Brookes, 18, told how she recently looked out of the window at her Blackpool home and saw group of youths aged between 12 and 13 involved in a brawl – one of them armed with a large barbecue fork.
She also spoke of a friend approached outside a town centre nightclub by a man he knew who lunged at him with a knife, slashing his hand, over an argument.
But she denied schools needed to beef up security.
She added: "There is something wrong if you have to start putting in methods of control before there is a problem and it is more likely to frighten people than anything else."
Tom Roe teaches self defence to Blackpool schoolgirls and is amazed at how few people know what to do when involved in a potentially life threatening situation. He said he knew of one instance where a fellow pupil had taken a knife into his school but said he had done it to show off.
He added: "The lad wouldn't have known what to do with it.
"You see a lot of youths hanging around, more groups than gangs, although they probably would think they're a gang. It’s definitely getting worse
“If Blackpool carries on expanding then I think you will see more and more knife crime.”
Varsha Jayanthi, 18, from Blackpool, used to work on Blackpool’s trams and told how gangs of youths regularly fought and vandalised carriages.
She said: “I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been carrying knives.”
Last year, a high-profile, UK-wide knife amnesty was held following The Gazette’s War on Knives campaign which saw the legal age to buy a knife raised from 16 to 18.
More than 100,000 blades were handed in, yet the crimes have continued.
Blackpool Police Superintendent Russ Weaver said: “These are problems which we generally associate with inner city areas and if we thought it was coming to Blackpool we would probably have all sorts of things in place to deal with it.
“We don’t have a gang issue.
“Generally police officers have powers to stop and search anyone they think may be carrying a weapon and we use those fairly regularly. The results don’t lead us to believe there is much of a problem in Blackpool.
“Similarly after the recent knife amnesty, the weapons that were handed in to us did not leave us believing there was a problem.
“As far as I’m aware we have never been called into a school to deal with a knife incident.”
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Weather for Blackpool
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 14 C to 27 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
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Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
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