Police monitor local gangs on YouTube music videos

Police officers who target knife crime said watching drill music videos posted by local gangs on YouTube has become an increasingly important part of their work.

The Xkalibre task force was originally set up by Greater Manchester Police in 2004 to stop gun crime, but has shifted its focus to tackling teenagers with knives.

Police figures show more than 400 people under 25 were injured by knives in a 12-month period between 2023 and 2024, although the number has fallen compared to previous years.

Det Insp Kat McKeown said many teenagers carried weapons to show they were “not to be messed with”.

The task force was formed in response to a notorious period in Manchester's history when the city was given the name 'Gunchester' due to the proliferation of weapons among gangs.

The unit's work focuses on the hotspot areas of Trafford and south Manchester.

Xkalibre is now well known in these communities and has even been featured in the exercise music videos officers use to gather intelligence.

“They will say that Xcal blocked the lockdown,” Det Insp McKeown said.

She said the unit's profile had led some young people in gangs to say they would only speak to Xkalibre officers.

“Their main need and what they want from a group is to be seen within their gangs and rival gangs as someone not to be messed with,” she told BBC Radio Manchester.

“And that they are not dissed by music titles.”

'Shocked'

Videos containing exercise music, which may contain lyrics describing acts of violence and recent attacks, are used by the unit to monitor young people.

Det Insp McKeown said: “Certain gangs in our areas wear different colored bandanas – some of these groups are really talented and release music videos like Drill.”

“So you'll be talking about a child who was recently murdered, and that in itself can cause tension within a community,” she said.

“Twenty years ago we wouldn’t have looked at YouTube to monitor our local gangs – but now a five-minute video could tell more than ten hours of us walking around the streets trying to talk to people.”

In the Greater Manchester area, 44 out of 100,000 young people under the age of 25 were affected by knife crime, according to police figures.

The unit has used the information in the videos to identify which gangs are in conflict with each other, but the supply of knives is another problem.

“Most of the knives my people get come from the internet,” Det Insp McKeown said, adding they were “pretty legal”.

Those taken off the streets are “a fraction of what’s really out there,” she added.

Her task force also discovered that some local stores were selling knives to teenagers.

Two days after 17-year-old Prince Walker was fatally stabbed in Moss Sid in April, police sent 15-year-old cadets into shops to buy knives and many were successful.

“I was shocked,” Det Insp McKeown said.

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