What does the shooting of Olivia Pratt-Korbel mean for Liverpool?

More than 200 “mid and high ranking Merseyside criminals” have been arrested over the last two years and a similar number fled to countries like Holland, Spain and Dubai as they feared arrest in what is the UK’s most extensive police investigation into organised crime.

But as a consequence, younger criminals are “backfilling” the vacancies left by hundreds of older gangsters who have been arrested or are on the run, experts told the paper. People who work with young offenders in the city say criminals “terrorising the community” have become “younger, more brazen and more violent”.

Does this mark the end of ‘grass culture’?

“People in our city have paid the ultimate price of loss of life,” Molly McCann, a mixed martial artist who works with the Weapons Down Gloves Up scheme to keep young people safe and off the streets, told the Liverpool Echo. “It’s been possibly one of the worst weeks in the city’s history, it’s what it feels like.”

Calling on anyone with information about Olivia’s murder to contact the police, she said: “You’re not being a grass, you’re doing the right thing. If it was me in that position, I would be doing the same thing.”

Bland wrote in The Guardian that “the idea of a ‘no-grass’ culture – a reluctance to help police with any investigation, no matter how serious the crime – is persistent in Liverpool”, and “intimately connected to the city’s history of gang violence”.

In 2017, Stuart Kirby, professor of policing and criminal investigation at the University of Central Lancashire, told the BBC that this prioritisation of loyalty over justice has been passed down over “generations and generations”.

However, Bland added, there is now “every sign that members of the public are determined to help bring the perpetrator to justice”, with police investigating Olivia’s murder understood to be “increasingly confident”.

Residents local to Olivia disagreed that a “no-grass” culture persists in Liverpool, telling The Guardian that the community “appears united in helping to find Olivia’s killer”.

Peter Mitchell, chief executive of the Big Help Group, which runs a local community centre, told The Independent that although Liverpudlians often “feel a level of intimidation that if they speak out, that may put themselves at risk”, the city has “an in-built resilience and in-built sense of right and wrong” so “if we can provide a safe space, they will come forward”.

Mitchell added that Liverpool’s gangs were a “minute minority” in an otherwise “brilliant” city. “They are cowards,” he said. “We will not allow them to win.”​

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/liverpool/957751/what-does-shooting-olivia-pratt-korbel-mean-liverpool