let's see what the legislation says. you are asking me abouta pig in a poke, and i will wait to see what legislation the opposition may try to bring forward. the most powerful storm ever to reach the bahamas has now made landfall. "catastrophic conditions" are forecast. germany's far—right celebrates gains in two state elections — but exit polls suggest they've failed to gain overall control in either place. now on bbc news, charlotte callen investigates an innovative scheme developed by avon and somerset police that uses mentoring and education to help young drug dealers break out of a life of crime. just like scavengers, basically, do you know what i mean? we used to just walk around and rob people, it's as simple as that. and hurt them? yeah, if they don't give

us the money, we used to hurt them, yes. grosvenor road, the frontline. there was a time that the police couldn't even drive down there good. and we'd be mad dogging them as well, like... "what are you going to do?" do you know what i am trying to say? so, i think that put us number one on the police's hit list. clinton wilson, known as ‘king aggi', was the leader of one of britain's most notorious gangs of drug dealers, the aggi crew. a group of friends from east bristol who grew up to become violent and dangerous criminals. the police couldn't grab me off of this road here. i would stand right here with my back to them, like this, yeah? they ain't grabbing me, because if they grab me, all of them's running it. so we've got a problem, simple as that. because you were such a tight group? because we were such a tight group. the aggi crew ruled bristol's

crack cocaine market with intimidation and violence. but when clinton wilson's criminal empire crashed around him, he lost most of his adult life to prison. but 20 years on, and bristol is still the crack capital of england. now, clinton wants to stop other young people getting involved in drug dealing, ending up in prison or worse. you have to understand these kids nowadays. they‘ re running around with swords, you know. but i know that they don't know that if they stab you, you're going to die. our main story tonight — cracking down on knife crime. new figures show that 100 people have been fatally stabbed so far this year in the uk. greater manchester police says that it is increasing efforts to tackle knife crime. detectives have launched a murder investigation after an 18—year—old man was stabbed in birmingham last night. police officers from west and south yorkshire have held talks with the home secretary to discuss the problem of knife crime. tonight, we start with the scourge of knife crime sweeping england. drug dealers don'tjust flood our streets with crack and heroin. they are also carrying knives to assert their control. but is prison always the answer?

the police in bristol have another idea. they have named it the call in. it is risky, but they hope it may save lives and keep some young people out of prison. what i do see is an awful waste of talent and bright young individuals that have turned to criminality. what can we do to stop them offending? and that is what the principles of the call in is all about. based on an american idea, the call in gives young offenders a choice when they are arrested for drug dealing. go to court and face prison or go on a 6—month course to try and break out of the cycle of crime. it goes further than any other uk police force has before, and clinton is using his experience to reinforce the message that crime doesn't pay. the young people have been given access to education, apprenticeships, even driving lessons, with the hope that they will get a job and a legal means of making money. the police also hope that it will cut violent crime on our streets.

but will it work, or will these people, who've often had a very difficult upbringing, be lured back to their bad ways? i expected a few more of these on the pitch today. we've lost our last three games because we haven't had... all we can hear is clint, alright? they're dominating at the moment. yeah, we're fifth, but that ain't good enough, boys. we're better than that. get on with it! shouting these days, the only shooting clinton wilson is involved in comes on the football pitch. yeah! but in the 1990s, he was the leader of the aggi crew, one of the most feared gangs in the country.

it started the same as probably most of the gangs in the ghettos, just me and two of my friends, you know what i mean? we was just going around, doing badness on the streets, getting up to boys' mischief, really and truly. lots of robberies, just trying to make money. we was the tightest gang that bristol's ever seen, definitely. we loved each other, that was the main thing, innit. so, everybody knew that they were safe, as in, nobody couldn't trouble us without repercussions. the relationship between the police and the community in st pauls was difficult. attempts to enforce the law had resulted in the infamous uprising of 1980. and more violence six years later during a raid on the black and white cafe, the hub of drug dealing on the frontline. distrust of the authorities was passed through generations, and as the ‘80s became the ‘90s, many young people in st pauls

still felt they lacked opportunities. why didn't you just go and get a job? you were 16, go and get a proper job like everyone else. when i was 15, 16, i was offered jobs, i used to cut hair and i was wicked at barbering, but all i was being offered as a young'un was yts. i was making more money than yts when i was 13, 111. yts was £25 a week at the time. yeah, so, in my eyes, i ain't doing no yts for two years, £25 a week, work every day. in a ghetto youth's mind, that's like...wasting time, because you can't live on £25 a week, and more to the point, you're worth more than £25 a week. so, the way the aggi crew decided to get money was to take it from other people, even if that meant using violence, something clinton now regrets.

we was prepared to do anything to anybody. do you know what i mean? everyday when they were going out to do things, it was about how much money we could get and bring back, that was it. but it became clear that there were more lucrative moneymaking opportunities in st pauls than street robbery. i bought a 16th of crack, which was £100 then, yeah, i made ten stones out of that 16th. i got a phone call and it was a mate, he said, "yeah, there is some girl at the bottom of the road, "she wants one of those things, innit?" so ijust left the bedsits, walked up the road, come back with 20 quid. you have to think that before this, we might be out all day for £20. do you know what i mean? there has been days when we have robbed four or five people and got a fiver between ten of us. the aggi crew were already well—known to the authorities for their robberies, but they soon became the main players in bristol's class a drug market,

and when the occasional £20 sale of a rock of crack had developed into a multimillion—pound business, there was no bigger target for the police. bristol saw the effects of the crack and heroin epidemic land within its city. so, as a result, there was a fairly significant drug market, which resulted in violence on the streets. that was from a range of murder to violence and a significant amount of assaults. gary haskins, who runs the call in for avon and somerset police, was an officer in east bristol when the gang was at its peak, and the drug war on his patch saw guns being carried by both sides. to combat the level of violence that the aggi crew and other gangs posed, it resulted in armed police being deployed in the city. and that was the first time a british force had done that — or an english force? i believe it was, yeah. we had guns, i'm not going to lie. we had guns, you know what i mean? but we'd only take the gun out if we were going

to shoot somebody, so... so, you shot people? people have been shot, yeah. by you? i never shot shot nobody, no. all of this area would just be full up with people, you know what i mean? mainly outside here, outside the cafe. because this — which one was the cafe then? this one. black and white cafe? yeah. the police hoped that getting the aggi crew off the front line would give them the opportunity to stop the scourge of crack cocaine that was blighting the area. but clinton thinks differently. if i leave this line today, there ain't no less drugs being sold out here, i ain't just not selling it. trust me, there ain't no taking me and drugs off no road. no, no, no, no, no. all they're doing is stopping my money, they're not stopping no drugs. the users are not going to go, "0h, he's locked up, let's not smoke drugs no more." they don't, they come down here the same way. they don't have to see me, they will see another guy.

that's it. they didn't take no drugs off the road by locking me up, trust me, at all. you went to prison for, what, ten years? yeah. more? yeah, more than that because i've done two of them. how much did that change your life? dramatically. do you know what i mean? because that's a long time. the first time i went was seven years, the second time i went was five years, so that's 12 years off your life. obviously, anybody loses 12 years, it is going to change them, do you know what i mean? but ijust grew up anyway, to be honest. you know what i mean? i wouldn't say prison rehabilitated me and taught me new skills and taught me how to think differently or nothing like that. i done that all myself. prison didn't teach me nothing, it was just wasting my time. for many gang members, trying to break free is near impossible. clinton spent many years in prison.

some of his friends are still inside and will be for the rest of their lives. but one former member of the aggi crew paid the ultimate price. jama powell was murdered in december 2017. too many young men losing their lives, there's too many families that have to go through what we've had to experienced. clinton lost a friend that day, leila powell lost her brother and solomon powell lost his son. jama powell was stabbed. do you think his death

might actually be a warning to some people? i think that probably made a couple of people put their knife in their pocket the next day. do you worry that you might be next, that you might be a target? yeah, of course, but i'm not going to stop walking on the street or stop coming out of the house, do you know what i'm trying to say? this is what you will live with, these are the things you've got to live with. nothing will bring that young man back. i met with the parents, i saw the absolute distress that they had gone through. what words could i say as a police officer that would make things right? you can always say, "we will do our best." whatever words i said would never be enough, and i think the community have stood back and realised that enough is enough, and thankfully, now the communities of east bristol are pulling together. they've always been a very tight community, but i think the death

of jama really resonated across that area. i'm just crying for peace right now, really, in bristol among the youth. i've got a son, he is seven. you think about the younger ones, their future, what's going to happen. it's really sad. we don't want this happening on a regular basis, to see people come mourning a life because of knife crime, it is so sad. clinton fears going back to prison, so he says he has put his criminal lifestyle behind him. he wants young people promised a life of easy money for selling crack or heroin to think again.

if somebody came to me and said, look, you don't have to go to jail. i know you did that, a mistake, you know what i mean, but we can maybe do something if you do certain things, you can get around that. one of the mentoring schemes used is call in. like clinton, clayton grew up in east bristol, but he chose a different path that make path in life. i remember looking at the aggi crew and clinton when i was younger, he was leader of the group. i realised these guys were doing things the wrong way but they had leadership. he had something about him. for him to do what he did at that young age, i realised people in the corporate industry were doing things in the right way but exactly the same things. looking at somebody from the street like clinton, he has the product, the drugs. he has his crew.

the corporate has a team. he is the boss man. the corporate has the manager. they make money, lose money. corporate people, profit and loss. street people go to prison, or the corporate industry you go bankrupt and lose theirjob. what i've realised is if you have the right mentor and have the right belief, you can achieve anything. surround yourself with those people. these kids are not too far gone, they are not. they are talking about positive things, you know what i'm trying to say? the future, they are chatting about the future, which they probably don't really do very often to be honest. all brainstorming together, coming up with good ideas. it's like a rotating door, and there's no point sending them to prison when they don't have skills to come back out and survive anyway. like myself. you end up going back and forth, back and forth, until in the end out

here becomes probably a lot harder to live in than inside. what would success look like for the call in? one man who has turned his life around is roger moore, who went through the street to boardroom programme a couple of years ago. he had a long immigration struggle and didn't have the right to work in the uk so ended up selling drugs just to make some money. getting involved in that is risk. for some people it's life and death. i thought at the time i didn't have a choice. because you couldn't get a normaljob? i couldn't get a normaljob so i couldn't depend on my mum. i'm a big man, what do i do? it's not something i wanted to do or glorify or i was proud of, but i didn't know another way to make a living, so unfortunately i had to get involved in that for a while until things changed. it was only when the situation escalated that roger realised he needed to get out

of that way of life. someone pulled a gun on me and that put things in perspective for me. i sort of dropped it immediately after that situation. it was easy for me to let it go because i saw what that lifestyle leads to. either prison or the grave, and i didn't want either of those things. after attending a street to boardroom course and receiving guidance and support from clayton and his expert mentors, roger has achieved his dream of opening his own caribbean restaurant in bristol. i think it needs to be as easy to get involved in business and learn trade and entrepreneurship as it is easy to pick up a knife, as easy as it is to get involved in drugs or any criminal activity. there needs to be doors that are open for people of my background. when you look at roger moore, he came from the course

and he is an ambassador for street to boardroom. he is believable, you're not talking about it, they can see it. he is the ceo of his own restaurant. gary haskins wants to see roger's success story replicated by other young people facing similar challenges. given those that have committed a crime an opportunity to see the misjudgement they have made, giving them the tools within their toolkit, giving them a mentor and some guidance, put them in key, mandatory courses with clayton and people like that. give them the opportunity, how to apply for a job and seek further education. give them basic life skills that perhaps were not available at the time. young kids all across the country are getting involved in drug dealing and gangs, and some of them are carrying knives. tonight, i have come to an inner city bristol youth project to meet a young boy called zac. he is only 11; but he has already been in trouble with the police. we have changed his name and voice to protect his identity.

how did you get involved in drug dealing in the first place? i know people who take drugs, and all that. it's just easy. i know where to get it from, from weed to heroin, crack, cocaine, pills. ijust wanted to make quick change, quick money. why was it so easy? because coming from the place i come from, it's just one of those things you are supposed to know, are expected to know. when you say coming from the place like you've come from, talk to me about your life. places where there is like poverty, drug addicts, single mothers, everything. what kind of things have you been

through in your life? you are only 111. i've experienced family members being killed, my dad being injail, family members being injail, being poor. what kind of things were going on in yourfamily? you talked about your cousin who was shot. what happened and how did you feel? some people came to his house and shot him. it was sad when i heard about it, but then after i was like, ijust got on with it. it was just normal. what kind of things have you been offered to sell drugs? hundreds, thousands of pounds. zac says he doesn't carry a knife but he knows people that do. he says the reason is they do are not what the media would have you believe.

they are making out young people look like theyjust carry knives because they just want to hurt people, sort of thing, or that they are troubled or crazy. it's not really like that, to be honest, no. so why are young people carrying knives in the way that they were not before? i don't know, for protection, i don't know. i can't speak on the past generation but it's just for protection. how easy do you think it would be to get away from the drugs and the money and the danger and say, i can be a 14—year—old and i can live a safer life? all i know is just being in the streets. i don't know, like, i can't see myself working a normal 9-5. but i can see myself

doing stuff that's wrong. which is obviously kind of messed up, but... when you meet zac, you realisejust how young these kids are. he's 11; and at school, yet he talks about knives and guns and murder is as if they are all just completely normal. it makes you wonder what he will be like when he is say, 16, 18, and whether projects like the call in are simply too late for him. for so many different reasons people make the wrong decision in life. and they get a criminal conviction. so what we have done in bristol east is trying to think of a number

of diversion schemes that will stop people making that wrong decision that will either end up in their injury or a criminal conviction or could ultimately end up in somebody's death. the knife carrying issue is not going away. we still continue to have one too many young people injured from violence and knife—related criminality. what would you say to the people you hurt? because they want a sorry from you. i would say i'm very, very sorry. definitely, to the people i hurt, the people i robbed, even. it wasn't theirfault, you know what i mean. how important is it people like clinton are involved in trying to help other young people? my personal opinion, it is hugely important because for somebody like clinton to come forward and say crime hasn't paid for him, isn't that a lesson for everybody who takes that journey?

i would love to try and change some stuff around bristol. just to help the youth, give them some insight into this thing, the real thing. find the real thing. help them from being in gangs, yeah, fighting about nothing and going to prison. i just believe that enough of these kids are doing this thing because they are scared. street to boardroom, we broke that down real quick. that's what it's about, a mentality, nothing else. that's what we are trying to change. if you can change the mentality, you change a whole heap of things in this area. some people will question whether these young people should be given a second chance. they have committed the crime, so they should do the time. but the police say one mistake shouldn't define the rest of their lives. we know that one person on the call in has already been kicked off for reoffending.

it's now down to the others to take this opportunity and break free from a life of crime. could this be a real answer to the problems we've got with knife crime and gangs and young people? i think it will make a difference. but i'm invested into it so i'm naturally biased towards it. ultimately for me, the risk is we allow that young people to go back to prison, and be criminals again. or do we invest in that person. to stop them committing crime — prisons don't pay. don't get me wrong, i have met people in prison where i think, they should be in prison and they shouldn't be let out. there are people in the world like this. but the majority of people you meet, they have just gone down the wrong path and don't know what to do. if we get one success then it's worth investing into. for me to take that one young person who could be a victim or perpetrator, but to give that young person an opportunity is surely a successful story. if i could help one guy, just one of them, then have i not done something good?

hello. there was a cooler, fresher fresher feel for all of us today. pleasant in the sunshine and across the south—east in the sunshine and temperatures were as high as 21. further north, we saw a few showers, some heavy ones and thunder for a while across eastern scotland and north—east england. those are pushing away but a few showers will continue overnight. this high pressure will be crucial over the days ahead. around it, we have

currently a north—westerly breeze, but as we head into monday it will be a south—westerly that will bring some milder and cloudy weather. ahead of that, showers continuing over that for the northern half of the uk. clearer skies for eastern scotland, for many parts of england and wales. it will be quite chilly once again, those are the temperatures in towns and cities and in rural areas we could be sitting out three or 4 degrees by the morning. similarly sunshine perhaps for the southern and eastern parts of the uk but as the south—westerly wind freshened, so it will introduce more cloud around some of the western hills, there may be some drizzly rain. most of the rain coming into northern ireland, northern england and western scotland, not much rain for eastern scotland. for northern parts of the uk, 16 or 17 at best. likewise, we should should see temperatures a degree or so higher further south. a similar picture on tuesday. still a south—westerly breeze, not quite as strong on tuesday. eastern areas may stay dry with a little bit of brightness and

sunshine. most of the rain or drizzle coming in across western areas, especially over the hills. temperatures similar to those of monday. the weather starts to change again as we move to the middle part of the week. this weather front is perhaps the most significant because it will bring some rain across south—eastern parts of the uk. there could be as much as half an inch of rain overnight which will linger into wednesday morning. that clears away and we look to the north to see some showers and sunshine, a burst of heavy rain coming down across scotland and northern ireland into northern england, that could contain some thunderstorms. changing the wind direction on wednesday, going back to a north—westerly so temperatures will be dropping, northern parts of the uk back to 15 at best. over the week ahead, we will find fluctuations in the wind direction, a north—westerly to a south—westerly, but that is going to keep it unsettled with some showers or longer spells of rain.

this is bbc world news today. i'm simon pusey. our top stories: the most powerful storm ever to reach the bahamas has made landfall. islanders are warned of "catastrophic conditions". please, of "catastrophic conditions". please heed the warni there please, please heed the warning. there is last—minute transportation thatis there is last—minute transportation that is being provided to get out. germany's far—right celebrates gains in two state elections — but exit polls suggest they've failed to gain overall control in either place. more disruption, more protest. hong kong pro—democracy activists continue their weekend of action, after violent confrontations with police on saturday. and missiles fly in both directions across the border between israel and lebanon. hezbollah says its rockets destroyed an israeli tank.