News

Nottingham protest demands action on city knife crime

A protest in Nottingham’s city centre called for action after a series of knife-related crimes led to a string of arrests and serious injuries.

The protest took place Saturday (8th March) following a number of incidents in the space of a fortnight.

A 17-year-old stabbed in Primark on February 23rd, a fight involving a machete was reported in Hockley on February 27th and another stabbing the day took place a day later at a house party close to Nottingham Castle.

The protest was organised by Switch Up, a youth organisation working to deter young people away from crime and violence.

Founder and chief executive of Switch Up, Marcellus Baz said: “We need to hear our community. We need to understand their pain. We need to relate to our community and understand what they’re going through so that leaders, decision makers can make more informed decisions.

“We want to see a long-term strategy for reducing knife crime. We want more investment for frontline community youth services, and we want to be around the table with decision makers, for the city, for our community and young people.

“We need to make a more informed and educated vote for who we put in power, rather than a loyalty vote, because if we get the right people in power, then they are then going to do the work, enabling us to be able to have the right resources to be able to, address these systemic root causes, structural causes that are causing this.”

Zoe Cooke, whose 22-year-old son Byron Griffin was stabbed to death in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, in 2021, has been a vocal advocate for knife crime prevention and attended the protest.

She said: “We just want everybody to come together as a community and work with each other.

“We want parents to know that there is community organisations out there, and we want them to make use of the organisations that are there.

“We need people to realise that the community organisations out there need more funding, we need to kind of make a bit of noise because the government need to listen as well, because I do believe right now the governments are very much letting us down. I do believe they don’t know what to do.

“And I think as well as parents, as parents, we need to be educating our children, this shouldn’t be happening to our children. Our children should not be walking streets with knives.”

“They shouldn’t even feel the need to go out the house with a knife. It’s not normal.”

Also in attendance was the mother and sister of Danny Castledine, a 22-year-old man from Mansfield who was stabbed to death on holiday in Amsterdam.

They have since set up the Danny C. Foundation – a charity dedicated to tackling knife crime.

His sister, Chloe Castledine, said of the recent events in Nottingham: “It’s so hard to see it on the news every day because we know that some of the family who’s feeling the same way we do, and knowing how hard it is to go through something like that, and it always brings it back.

“No matter how much time is passed, every time you see it on the news, it’s like the first time we saw an article about Danny. So it always brings it home. And it is so hard to see, especially when this is home to us.

“We can’t feel safe coming to do things like this because it is getting so out of control.”

Last week, Notts Police Assistant Chief Constable Suk Verma, head of local policing for Notts Police, said: “I made a commitment to the people of Nottingham, and I will continue to stand by it.

“The public can expect to see high-visibility patrols across the city centre and these patrols will continue until the public feel reassured.

“This will be a combination of our neighbourhood policing teams, response teams, as well as our knife crime team.

“Nottingham is a safe city, and we will not allow the actions of a few to spoil it for the majority of law-abiding citizens.”