Police are treating a stabbing that followed the Celtic-Rangers ‘Old Firm’ clash as attempted murder as their English counterparts look to Glasgow to tackle bloodbaths in their cities.
Three men were stabbed after the match following a ‘horrific mass brawl’ outside a pub.
All three of yesterday’s victims were taken to Glasgow Royal Infirmary following the violent brawl at around 5pm.
Two, aged 47 and 30, sustained wounds to their faces and the third man, a 29-year-old, was stabbed in the buttocks.
An eyewitness claims they saw a ‘horrific mass brawl’ involving 15 people. There were other eyewitness reports of a young Celtic fan being ‘in a bad way’ after being stabbed and of someone with a ‘stab wound in the neck’.
More than 100 experts will meet this week after the Government unveiled new plans which could see frontline workers in schools, hospitals and police stations accountable for failing to ‘spot warning signs’ of violent crime among young people.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid floated the idea of a so-called ‘public health duty’ intended to help spot the warning signs that a young person could be in danger, ‘such as presenting in A&E with a suspicious injury, to worrying behaviour at school or issues at home’.
A consultation in England and Wales will assess the extent to which those on the front line will be held to account for failing to prevent a young person getting involved in violence, a Home Office spokesman said.
The proposals are similar to the successful approach taken in Scotland, where knife crime has been treated as a public health issue for more than a decade, with a significant reduction in stabbings in Glasgow. Stab wounds in the city have halved in 12 years of the policy.
The new ‘public health’ approach will him launch a consultation today that would impose legal duties on public bodies such as schools and hospitals.
It also mirrors the anti-terrorism Prevent strategy, set up in 2006, which is used to identify youngsters at risk of being sucked into extremism.
Under the Glasgow model, gang members and those at risk of joining gangs are referred to violence reduction units. There, they are offered mentoring by someone with similar experiences of violence or given opportunities to further their education.
Doctors are invited into schools to show graphic images of knife wounds and pupils are also taught about the tough sentences for violent crimes.
A consultation on the new strategy will run for eight weeks and establish exactly how the system should work in England.
It will decide how doctors, teachers and social workers would report at-risk pupils and how to impose a legal duty on them to do so.
Violence reduction units already operate in London and the West Midlands but are expected to be expanded there and elsewhere.
The Prime Minister warned ‘we cannot simply arrest ourselves’ out of the problem of violent crime as the Government announced the new measures.
Theresa May opened the serious youth violence summit today, with experts including Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, Patrick Green from the Ben Kinsella Trust, and Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, whose husband Garry was beaten to death by a gang vandalising his car in 2007.
