What Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is doing about knife crime after 75 teenagers killed since 2021

The killing of Kelyan Bokassa one week into 2025 comes after teenage homicides reached their lowest level in 12 years. The 14-year-old aspiring drill rapper, who went by the name of ‘Grippa’, was knifed on the 472 bus in Woolwich at 2:30pm on Tuesday (January 7), just two weeks after laying flowers for his friend Daejeun Campbell, 15, known as ‘Boogz’, who was stabbed to death in September 2024.

Kelyan’s mum Mary Bokassa told the BBC her son had been groomed by gangs from the age of six-years-old, and that he had been in and out of care, returning ‘underweight, very hungry, tattooed and exposed to drugs’. According to court documents seen by MyLondon, Kelyan was due in court on Friday (January 10) charged with carrying a machete.

St Columba’s Catholic Boys’ School in Bexleyheath confirmed Kelyan attended the school in 2022, while Ms Bokassa said her son more recently attended Newhaven School, a Pupil Referral Unit in Eltham. According to a report by News Shopper, Kelyan also went missing from an address in Kent in April 2023 and was believed to have travelled to Greenwich.

People were seen leaving floral tributes at the scene where Kelyan Bokassa, 14
(Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)

Research by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), conducted on 13 to 17-year-olds in England and Wales, found gang membership, school exclusion, involvement in drugs, and going missing from home are among the biggest risk factors for carrying a knife or perpetrating violence.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of respondents to the YEF survey said they carried a weapon for self-defence, and over half (53 per cent) said they had changed their behaviour due to fear of violence.

Research by the Ben Kinsella Trust say teenagers remain over twice as likely to be fatally stabbed than they were 10 years ago. The charity, set up after the murder of Ben Kinsella in Islington in 2008, found 82 per cent of homicides among teenage victims involve the use of a knife or sharp instrument, a stark contrast to the overall figure for victims of all ages, which stands at 41 per cent.

How bad is knife crime in London?

After dropping to 17 in 2020 (during the pandemic), the number of teenage homicides in London reached a peak of 30 in 2021 (breaking a 13-year record). That number has fluctuated downwards since then, with 14 teenage homicides in 2022; 21 in 2023; and, by MyLondon’s calculation, 10 in 2024.

The last time the figure was lower than 10 was in 2012, when there were nine murder investigations into the deaths of people between 13 and 19. Since 2000 the figure has generally remained below 20 a year, with 2007 and 2008 appearing as outliers before a marked rise since 2017 towards the 2021 peak.

It means Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has overseen the highest levels of fatal teenage violence, and one death short of the lowest. Ensuring that figure does not rise again will be a key part of answering his critics on knife crime and violence in the capital as he heads into his third term at the helm of City Hall.

Data shows how recorded knife crime incidents in London have fluctuated over the last 14 years
(Image: Gavin Hales)

In March last year, Gavin Hales, a senior research fellow at The Police Foundation thinktank, shared a graph on X tracking knife crime levels in the capital since 2010 using Met Police data. He described the data as a ‘mixed story’, with overall numbers up since 2016 (when the Mayor was first elected), but the total number of knife inflicted injuries down.

In September Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government banned zombie-style knives and machetes, while promising to half national knife crime within a decade by bringing in new legislation, including banning the sale of Ninja swords and strengthening laws around the online sale of knives. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper also said there should be ‘tough and clear consequences for violence’.

When the Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC) first introduced its knife crime strategy in 2017, the report said it would take action with six steps: targeting lawbreakers, offering ways out of crime, keeping deadly weapons off the streets, protecting and educating young people, standing with communities, and supporting victims.

Sir Sadiq Khan will continue to tackle violence using a public health approach
(Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

In 2019 the Mayor set up the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) to ‘tackle the underlying causes of violence’. This ‘public health approach’ also forms a key part of the Police and Crime Plan that came after his first re-election in 2021.

Some of the key points then included: disrupting gangs with the Violent Crime Taskforce, pumping millions into programmes with young Londoners, targeted support at schools and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), and research into the drivers of violence.

A subsequent 2022 MOPAC report on youth violence found youth homicide was ‘largely unpredictable’ but ‘deprivation levels are a driver’, with 62 per cent of deaths (between 2017 and 2021) in high or very high deprivation areas of London. Offences were also much more likely to happen in public spaces (62 per cent), and during the summer months, the report found.

MOPAC’s report found injuries from knife crime and violence were more common in the summer months
(Image: MOPAC)

In his latest Police and Crime Plan (which is still being drafted with submissions from Londoners) Sir Sadiq said his administration will continue a public health approach to tackle the complex underlying causes of violence, working with police to take strong action against offenders, diverting people at risk of violence, and intervening with those already at risk.

This time around the Mayor’s priority aims are to reduce knife crime injury in London (contributing to the Government’s goal of halving knife crime); reduce robbery and knife-enabled robbery in London; protect people from criminal exploitation; and to bring more perpetrators of Violence Against Women and Girls to justice and take preventative measures against misogyny.

Got a tip, a court date, or some gossip? Please email callum.cuddeford@reachplc.com or WhatsApp 07580255582.

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Image Credits and Reference: https://www.mylondon.news/news/uk-world-news/what-mayor-london-sadiq-khan-30741133