In reaction to a local newspaper’s front page asking readers: “Whose side are you on?” the Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool disputed today that the city was “divided.”
Following the killing of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, Bishop Tom Williams said that Liverpool’s “criminal element” was only a “very tiny percentage.”
On Monday night, while a shooter tried to get into Olivia’s family’s house in the city’s Knotty Ash neighbourhood, Olivia was tragically shot.
The Liverpool Echo advised readers not to “surrender our city to the thugs,” while Merseyside Police cautioned against a “no-grass” ethos among residents.
Bishop Williams, however, took issue with the newspaper’s front page, which featured an image of Olivia with the question: “Whose side are you on?”
According to him, the problem with such title is that it gives the impression that there are two sides, such as Everton and Liverpool.
There is undoubtedly an element there that we would classify as criminal, but I believe that it is a very tiny minority.
However, the political editor of the Liverpool Echo, Liam Thorp, told Sky News: “We published a powerful front page today that simply asks readers: Which side are you on?”
There is a notion of an anti-grass culture, or maybe even a form of criminal code, in Liverpool and other places.
But, as the chief constable remarked yesterday, “This breaches every single boundary anybody could possibly have, even a hardened criminal,” she did a good job of putting it.
“A nine-year-old child was shot and killed in her house.” Even if you are engaged in crime, you have to go within yourself and ask yourself, “Surely this is the line.”
Bishop Williams said that the neighbourhood is upset by Olivia’s murder and that authorities have appealed for the community’s assistance in finding her perpetrator.
The one thing that bothers him is that people seem to think that our city is split, with criminals and everything else, he remarked.
“It’s not split evenly; there is a very tiny fraction, and I believe that they are receiving all the attention all the time, which irritates me the most.”
You get the idea that “they get away with it.”
The shooter, who pursued a 35-year-old guy off the street and into Olivia’s family house, is not thought to have been after Olivia.
The 35-year-old was driven to the hospital by friends after surviving the assault. Both Olivia and her mother Cheryl, who had both been shot, were left behind by him.
Criminals in the area have been encouraged by the police to “check their consciences” and hand the shooter in.
Bishop Williams also cautioned that Olivia’s death, which occurred precisely 15 years after the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in neighbouring Croxteth, may have a lasting impression on Liverpool’s young.
People, especially youngsters, are clearly furious and terrified, he added.
“A kid was slain, and I believe the impact on them will carry on for a very, very long time.”
He continued, saying that due of the city’s criminality, kids were no longer allowed to play in the streets because “there’s this element of terror of another world going on.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Kameen said Wednesday that the community has given the police “wonderful support.”