FOUR children have been stabbed in Croydon within the space of SIX days.
There is no dressing this up, no underplaying it - this is an absolutely shocking and unacceptable statistic.
Disappointingly, politicians and police chiefs reacted to these incidents with plenty of platitudes and fairly empty buzz-phrases surrounding "community reassurance".
Beneath this bluster and behind closed doors, let's hope the issue is being taken seriously by our lawmakers.
When kids - for that's what both the victims and perpetrators are -feel the need to carry knives, you know there is clearly an issue.
The media is regularly and tediously blamed for whipping up a frenzy and the so-called fear of crime on these occasions, but this is utter nonsense - crime itself creates fear of crime, not journalists.
Of course there is an onus on us to be responsible and set the right context. Crime in Croydon, as a whole, is falling and we're not yet anywhere near the sort of open gang warfare which poisoned our streets five or six years ago.
But this doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand and, as we suggested on these pages last week, hide behind our shiny new Westfield shopping centre and bright, sparkly council HQ.
Any town where four kids can be stabbed in the space of a week (one of them a 12-year-old, for goodness sake) has a problem. It just does, end of debate.
Lots of great work is being done by charities, volunteers and youth workers, to engage with young people and steer them away from this sort of path.
And, as we've said before, some great things are happening in our town (including that shiny shopping centre) which could lead us to an exciting and prosperous future.
But this underlying spectre of youth violence must be addressed - before someone is killed.
The real responsibility lies with the police, our politicians and other decision-makers, to tackle this problem.
Actually admitting we have a problem would be a good start.This piece, written by editor Glenn Ebrey, is taken from Friday's Croydon Advertiser, which also includes a special report on the stabbings and views on what can be done to tackle youth crime in Croydon.
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