The murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who died hiding behind her mother as a gunman opened fire in her family home, has both united the community in Liverpool and led to safety fears among locals.
Officers were called to a house in the Knotty Ash area of the city at around 10pm on Monday, following reports that an unknown man had fired a gun inside the property. Olivia was taken to hospital in a critical condition and later died.
Police have vowed not to rest until they find Olivia’s killer – who is still at large and may have fled overseas. Convicted burglar Joseph Nee, 35, has been named as the intended target of the shooting. Nee, who was shot in the upper body in the attack at Olivia’s home, was freed from prison on licence last year but will be returned to jail once he is out of hospital.
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Olivia’s murder has led to fears of a new wave of violent crime in Merseyside and concerns that progress on gang violence in the region is being eroded.
Is gun violence on the rise in Liverpool?
The data on this is conflicting. Over the last week, four people have been killed on Merseyside, noted The Guardian’s Archie Bland. One victim was stabbed and three were shot.
But although that “terrible immediate toll” takes the number of people killed in the region this year to 14, this week should be “set against the wider picture”, he added.
The last fatal shooting before this week had been more than a year ago. Last year, the area was seventh in a table of total firearm offences in England and Wales, and placed lower than that on a per capita basis.
The 43 recorded shootings last year was the lowest number in more than 20 years and the “story of gun violence in Liverpool” over the last decade has been one of a “gradual downward trajectory”, explained Bland.
It’s worth noting, however, that many regions saw a reduction in violence during the Covid pandemic. The BBC’s home affairs correspondent, Tom Symonds, wrote that there are “very early signs” that progress on firearms crimes might have stalled in Merseyside, where “shots have been fired at houses, vehicles and people”.
Are we seeing more organised crime?
The city’s “sickening gang violence” could be a result of a police campaign to tackle organised crime in the area, reported The Mirror.
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.”
