Some of Scotland's oldest crime gangs are making a return after lying dormant for many years and using social media to share online videos of violent crimes.
Youth gangs such as Glasgow’s Calton Tongs and Lanarkshire’s Skulls have re-emerged on the streets reports the Sunday Mail, and are using sites such as TikTok to spread their threats online.
An investigation carried out by the Sunday Mail uncovered dozens of videos and pictures of teens – some linked to gang names from the 70s and 80s – wearing balaclavas and showing off weapons.
Videos posted to Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok showed terrifying attacks on rival gang members and threats of further violence.
The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU), as well as youth workers and former gang members, have issued warnings about the rise of the teen gang culture that has emerged as Scotland's lockdown restrictions have eased.
Will Linden, deputy director of the SVRU, set up in 2005 to tackle youth gangs, said: “Some of the names we are hearing again are the ones we saw before.
“Gang names can and do re-appear on places like online. Post-Covid, young people are looking to come together with their peers and some are making the mistake of thinking that’s with gangs.”
“It’s 13, 14 and 15-year-olds. They went into lockdown as children and have come out as teenagers.”
One video, believed to have been shared thousands of times on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, shows a brutal attack on a rival group in Glasgow.
Labelled a “riot an a hawf”, it shows three teenage boys chasing another youth through a train before catching up with him.
Knocking the boy to the ground they film themselves jumping up and down on his head while he lies helpless on the ground.
One can be heard shouting “yes” while another shouts “you are knocked out clean”.
Another WhatsApp video shows a brutal fight involving young girls and boys, understood to be near a school in the Glasgow area.
A victim, dressed in white and wearing a baseball cap, is punched to the ground before a group of half a dozen boys crowd around him kick him in the head.
Gangs including the Cranhill Fleeto and Castlemilk Young Team are also named in online videos.
One Lanarkshire-based youth worker said: “It’s as bad as I can remember. Some parts of Scotland have returned to the dark days where teenagers were scared to leave their schemes.
“Mostly, it’s being driven by Covid. Boredom because everything was shut.
"Now things have opened again, kids are getting out — and that’s not always good. I’ve heard of gangs names that haven’t been heard of since the 1970s and 1980s. The gangs some of these kids’ grandparents were in.”
TikTok said: “Content that depicts gang culture in a way that promotes illegal criminal activities, incites violence, or contains credible threats of violence is not tolerated on our platform and we have removed the videos in question.”
