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Challenging areas. For the first six months of this financial year we have had 18additional offences of serious youth violence. That is a percentage of 2.4%. I confirmwhat the Chairman has just said. I am sad to say that, since we last met, there have beentwo additional teenage homicides in London. The shooting of 16 year oldSamuel Adelagun and the murder of 17 year old Marvin Henry. This brings a total inLondon for the calendar year of 2010 to 17, against the same period of 12 last year and,in same period in 2008 it was 28 and in 2007, 23. Bottom line is 17 and every one ofthose 17 is one too many.To keep young people safe we are continuing to maintain our tactical focus through theumbrella I have mentioned before; Operation Verano. That includes the Blunt2taskforce, Safer Schools offensive, Safer Transport Teams and local Borough OperationalCommand Unit (BOCU) officers working intensely to try to ensure there are safejourneys and safe public spaces. It continues to be a real challenge.Knife crime still under pressure and that is up by 2.9%, although this quarter’s increase islower than the last quarter’s increase so, hopefully, that is a continuing trend. Perhapsmost importantly within that, incidents where knife is used to injure continues to reduce.That is down by 3.6%. Whilst knife crime is up by over 2%, actually knives used toinjure is down.I have mentioned before there is a clear parallel that we see between the overall knifecrime offences and the offence of robbery which continues to be a concern to us. Thatcontinues to be under pressure. Again, within that, gun robberies are down. Knifeenabled robberies are up. Then again, we have got to say that knife enabled robberies isup but that is enabled, not used. The actual times when a knife has been used to injureduring robberies is down. It is a very confused picture but the bottom line is injuries interms of direct use of knives are down, but the intimation of knives during robbery is up.That continues to be a challenge for us. We all know the issue of street robbery inLondon and just how important it is to keep a check on that.To address that we relaunched Operation Autumn Nights. Some people might recall forthe last few years we have had some very successful operations around Halloween underOperation Autumn Nights. That is about doing the obvious things; targeting hotspots andmaking sure we put asset there and putting all our tactics into trying to reduce theproblems we do have around Halloween. That has been successful in previous years andwe anticipate it being successful now. We are extending it beyond the Halloween periodbecause we see the need to put further effort into tackling street robbery.I would also come back and say what I always say. It is right that the MPA andeverybody else continues to maintain the pressure on the MPS to do everything we can todo something about youth crime in this city. I would still come back and say thenarrative should always include what do we do in the long term - long term policy issues- to address the real causations. I am at the suppression end of the business. We willcontinue to suppress and we will continue to work with communities but the real issuehere is the long term preventative activity that we know it takes years and years and goeswww.merrillcorp.com14