In their quest to fight a rising crime rate, London Police have continued to place the blame on urban youth and, more specifically, UK drill rappers. According to The Independent, they're even going to far as to try and stop drill music from being made at all.
Last month, it was reported that London Police were trying to stamp down the popularity of drill music by have music videos forcibly removed from YouTube channels. 30 videos were confirmed to have been removed, and the police stated that they had built a database of 1400 music videos they would be using to try to reduce violent crime.
One group, 1011, fought against the removal, starting a petition to have their videos reinstated. Now, it appears that that same group are the police's targets once again.
Back in November, the group had been caught armed with baseball bats and machetes, and were suspected of going to attack a rival gang. As their trial wrapped up on June 11th, the police applied for an unprecedented Criminal Behavior Order (CBO) that would forcibly ban the group from recording violent rap music. Music videos from 1011 were presented in court as evidence of criminal intent.
While the judge refused the CBO, this marks a new plateau in the lengths police will go to try and put a stop to drill music. All five members of the group pleaded guilty to their charges, with three of the members serving over 3 years, and the two underage members only serving 1-2.
Detective Chief Superintendent Southward of the Metropolitan Police said, "This is not about regulation or censorship, this is about making sure that we look specifically at the behaviours that have occurred and do what we can to prevent them from occurring again in the future in a way that is likely to result in violence."
