Social Comment

I called the police today before 8am.
Walking from Clapham Junction towards my normal bus stop I encountered the usual rowdy crowd of schoolchildren. But today something was up. They are usually noisy and shouting to each other across the street but today the tone was different. Their eyes glinted with something very scary. They seemed to fill the pavement more. As I stood at the bus stop for about a minute and watched I could see something was going to happen. They were moving in groups, up and down the street, some on their phones. They were facing off to each other, but this wasn't play fighting. There were groups from two schools.
Before anything actually kicked off I'd made the decision to call 999. I figured for a large group of schoolchildren to be this intimidating and wound up before 8am something had to happen. I called the police from my mobile whilst still watching this situation unfold. The operator asked me questions.
How many:? 15 to 25
How old? 13 -14
Any weapons seen? No, thank goodness for small mercies.
As the call came to a close the first punches were thrown and my bus arrived. The operator said the Police were on their way but I didn't stay to find out.
The situation upset me. Because fighting upsets me, and these were kids. No older than the kids I see in my youth group on a Friday. And they were mainly girls. Mainly black. and mainly Muslim. Young women shouting and screaming and kicking and punching.
As I sat on the bus, another woman was also starting her call to the Police. As she held the line, a young man further down the bus asked her if she was calling the Police. When she replied that she was he gave her a torrent of verbal abuse, saying it was a 'normal fight', and that they were 'his sisters' and she had 'no business' calling the police. The woman stood up for herself, quite rightly pointing out that kids are being killed on the streets of South London at the moment, and there is no such thing as a normal fight. I thought about backing her up, but decided against it. Why? because I feared for my own safety, because I am white and neither of the people on the bus were. Perhaps that's why the Police didn't receive 40 calls this morning from people standing at bus stops at Clapham Junction, becasue we are scared of what will happen if we speak out adn stand up for justice.
When did we become a society that looks on and lets our young people dish out their own violent justice? When did young people take justice into their own hands? When did gangs form on the streets of South London, and become an acceptable way of life for our kids?
How many kids have to die before something changes?
Hannah