(Click on the image above to read this article in The Guardian’s website)

Boris Johnson has done “virtually nothing” to tackle rising serious youth violence, according to a former senior London government officer who drew up the Conservative mayor’s initial proposals for addressing the issue.

Ron Belgrave, who left the Greater London authority (GLA) in January after six years as head of its community safety unit – the department responsible for the mayor’s policies on policing and crime until a recent restructuring – has condemned the approach of Johnson’s administration as “superficial, unserious and seeking to do as little as possible”, while hoping the problem “would just go away”.

He told the Guardian that the Tory mayoralty’s commitment “seemed to end the day after the proposals were published” in November 2008, with policies failing to progress due to insufficient personnel, internal disagreements and resistance on the part of some of Johnson’s key advisers on the grounds that serious youth violence was “a black issue” only. Read the rest of this entry →