The Met: Policing London is grimly informative viewing

Commissioning The Met: Policing London was an early initiative of Charlotte Moore when she was controller of BBC1, before becoming overall director of content, designed to show the BBC at its best.

These are first-rate fly-on-the-wall documentaries, enterprisingly filmed, skilfully edited and, at an hour long, taking enough time to allow stories to be told in detail.

Tonight’s episode, the second in the third series of The Met, tackles gang- related killings in Haringey, close to home for me.

In February last year, 22-year-old youth worker Kobi Nelson was rammed in his Honda Civic in Tottenham before being chased down and stabbed 14 times, apparently by four attackers.

The programme opens with a harrowing phone tape of him saying “I got stabbed ... I’m dead ... I’m dead”, and his brother desperately pleading: “Kobi, Kobi, chat to me.” He died at the scene.

“Kobi was a very good person, he tried to help everyone, family and community,” says his grieving mother.

At a briefing, the detective in charge, Luke Marks, reveals that “he did serve a term of imprisonment back in 2012 for a serious assault which was treated as a gang-related incident at the time, so it is possible that because of Kobi’s historic associations, he’s been targeted.

“What we do know is that there is a long-standing and very violent feud between gangs in Wood Green and a rival gang in the Tottenham area.” Areas no more than two miles apart.

A forensic breakthrough — saliva found on the airbag of the car that the attackers crashed into Kobi’s — leads to the identification of a suspect, Neron Quartey, 24, a known gang member from Wood Green.

He was convicted of the murder in August last year and sentenced to a minimum of 24 years but no one else has been charged.

Five weeks after the murder of Kobi, 19-year-old Kelvin Odunuyi was shot dead at the Vue Cinema in Wood Green by two men on a moped, an attack captured on CCTV.

“My son Kelvin was a very gentle boy, a gifted boy, always smiling and always willing to help,” says his grieving mother. He had been to a private school near Leeds but when he was 16 the family moved to Wood Green and he joined “the Wood Green Boys”, becoming known to police by his streetname, “Lampz”.

On re-examination, Kelvin’s DNA was found on a seat belt in the car used in the murder of Kobi. Nobody has yet been convicted of Kelvin’s murder, which was investigated by the same team as Kobi’s. Knife crime has gone up 90 per cent in Haringey in the last six months, we’re told, amid a total of 14,725 knife offences in London last year. Met Commissioner Cressida Dick says: “We’re absolutely clearly not on top of the issue. We need to get out there and get on with it.”

At a press conference she announces the launch of a new violent crime task force.

“The lifestyle a lot of these individuals have, they tread fine line between being victims of violent crime and perpetrators of violent crime,” says DCI Marks.

There is much talk of “the community”. What is never explicitly acknowledged is that 73 per cent of knife offenders in London are from black or ethnic minority backgrounds, and most victims too, as Chief Superintendent Ade Adelekan, the head of that Violent Crime Task Force, confirmed this year.

Despite that elision, this is grimly informative viewing.

The Met: Policing London airs on BBC1 at 9pm.