The Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness alongside the Violence Reduction Unit have launched the knives impact everyone campaign to get the message out there to young people.
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00:00 "Even if you've lost a loved one, no matter how the death happened, seeing a message like
00:06 that will have an impact. It brings back as soon as I've seen the message today like,
00:12 I miss you. That brought a lot of emotion to me because that is the message. I do miss
00:20 Samantha a lot and it's a message you can send to the phone but you'll never get a reply."
00:26 The Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner alongside the Violence Reduction Unit have
00:29 launched a campaign aimed at young people to show them that carrying a knife does impact
00:34 everyone. The image that will be used on public transport and in other forms of media is a
00:40 text that hasn't been delivered, reading "I miss you so much." Reading that, the launch
00:45 of the campaign, Carly and Alison from Samantha's Legacy and Tanya and Simon from the Connor
00:50 Brown Trust got emotional as it really hit home for them after they lost someone close
00:55 to them due to knife crime. "It's one of those messages that when you lose somebody you always
01:01 want to send it but receive a message back and the message it's shown you is it hasn't
01:07 been delivered and that's probably the biggest heartache you can receive." "It's so simplicity
01:15 in what it is but yet it has such a hard hitting message in that message and it just hits you
01:24 and it'll hit anybody, anybody who has lost anybody it will affect them and that's kind
01:32 of the point of it. You can't help but not read the words, you can't help but not say
01:38 that message, you just look up at that board and you instantly say that message and that
01:44 is the hard hitting message that we want to get across." As the campaign was being created,
01:49 police worked with young people to see how they could reach even more kids across the
01:53 region. "So young people have told us that the text messages are how they communicate,
01:58 it's how so many of us communicate now isn't it? But that emotional nature of the message
02:03 I think is really important. You see this message on the back of the bus today that
02:08 says 'I miss you' and it's not delivered and you know they're not going to get a reply
02:12 and that is a really poignant message and most people who have come here today have
02:15 gone 'huh' and had that kind of very visceral reaction to it." Unfortunately, knife crime
02:21 has been a big subject in the North East over the past few years and the Chief Superintendent
02:26 Helena Barron said that education and awareness is key at a young age. "Education is so important
02:32 and raising awareness of the issue. You know we can't hide from the issue, we do know that
02:37 we do have a problem with knives in our communities, it's a national issue, it's not just in the
02:41 North East. Trying to educate people at a young age, trying to make them aware of the
02:47 dangers of carrying weapons, the impact it can have not just on the person they use the
02:51 weapon against but also on themselves if they end up in the criminal justice system as a
02:56 result of it. It's devastating, it can have such a wide impact on so many people that
03:01 trying to educate from a very young age is really, really important."