“It is a culture that has been allowed to run wild.”
A London film-maker who risked her life to document gang culture has said more must be done to tackle street violence.
Penny Woolcock, who won the Achievement of the Year prize at last month’s Women in Film and TV awards, said most Londoners did not realise that they live near gang members and regularly cross “front lines” between rival groups.
She said it was a “tragedy and a disgrace” that this was happening in London. “I live in Angel and at the bottom of my road there is the N1 and the Cally Road boys,” she said. “This culture is right under our noses.
“In that environment, it is completely normal that, by the time you are 18, there are members of your family in jail, you know people who have been stabbed and shot and you have done these things yourself.
“It is a culture that has been allowed to run wild.”
During filming of her film 1 Day in 2009, about the postcode gang wars in Birmingham, Ms Woolcock was threatened with guns and police tried to make her show them her footage.
She filmed the city’s two notorious gangs — the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew — and later helped introduce rival gang members to each other.
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