Teenagers as young as 14 will be given field training courses on how to properly treat knife crime victims in three left-leaning cities in Britain.
The Young Responders programme, launched by St John Ambulance, will see teens taught “lifesaving first aid skills” in the Labour Party-run cities of London, Manchester, and Leeds over the next two years.
St John Ambulance, which admitted that knife crime had become a “major concern”, said in a statement per the BBC: “We know that in the moment of handling an incident, adrenaline can take over.
“The practical training we provide means that the response can be more instinctive and help a young person make the difference to the person in need.”
The first aid charitable NGO went on to say that many stabbing victims believe that they “cannot ask for help” for fear of facing criminal prosecution themselves.
Odane Cross — who runs a knife amnesty programme in Reading which offers food discounts in exchange for knives — claimed that the programme might help those young people who have been embroiled in gang culture.
“If their friend’s been stabbed, but they’ve got a weapon on them, they’ll be scared that if emergency services get called, they’ll all get arrested”, he said.
Cross said that since he began his knife amnesty programme three months ago, he has already collected 69 knives, only two of which came from people over 18.
“I had an 11-year-old give me in a machete the other day. They have no fear,” he said.
“His point of view was that if he kills someone, he’ll only get 11 years, and he will be out by the time he’s 22.”
A similar programme was launched in 2019 by the charity Street Doctors, which taught school children in 16 cities, including London, how to deliver first aid to stabbing victims during role-play sessions.
London has become an epicentre of knife crime in the UK in recent years. Under the stewardship of leftist Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, knife crime rose by over 50 per cent from before he took office to the beginning of the pandemic, soaring from 9,700 knife crime offences during the 2014/15 period to 15,600 in 2019/20.
The year before the Chinese coronavirus crisis also saw the highest number of homicides in London in ten years, with 150 people losing their lives.
Despite the city being placed under some of the strictest lockdown conditions in the country for most of last year, London still saw 126 homicides in 2020, 15 of whom were teenagers.
This week, a survey conducted for the Evening Standard by the polling firm Opinium found that a majority of London voters (52 per cent) listed tackling knife crime as their number one priority for the next mayor, beating out more affordable housing at 37 per cent, and reopening the economy after the coronavirus with 35 per cent.
The scourge of teenage knife crime was demonstrated once again on Friday, when one teen was stabbed to death and another was seriously injured in an attack at Amy’s Park in Harold Hill, east London. The same park was the site of the murder of teenage girl scout Jodie Chesney, who was killed by two teenage drug dealers in 2019.
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