Police have issued a stark warning about the increasingly deadly weapons circulating on Britain’s streets in the aftermath of the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel.
Gangs in Merseyside are using battlefield submachine guns capable of firing 850 rounds a minute to target each other, and it will not be long before such weapons are as common in other areas, officers have warned.
DCS Mark Kameen, the lead investigator on the Olivia Pratt-Korbel case, said Czech-manufactured Skorpion machine pistols were increasingly being used by criminals.
“If you start bringing that sort of battlefield military weaponry into communities and discharging it … You add that to the chaotic nature, lack of training, no moral compass, that’s where you get now the last three times a Skorpion has been used in Merseyside someone’s been killed every single time,” he said. “Is it any wonder when this gun’s firing 12 or 13 rounds in less than a second?”
Merseyside police have seized seven guns since the beginning of the year, including a Skorpion.
Nine-year-old Olivia was not killed by a Skorpion – she was shot with a revolver that was never recovered – but three other people gunned down in Liverpool last year were. Like Olivia, at least two of these were not the intended target of the gunman.
Ashley Dale, a council worker, was killed in the back garden of her home on 21 August, the day before Olivia’s murder, and Elle Edwards was fatally injured when a gunman opened fire outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey on Christmas Eve.
Kameen said: “We had people firing at cars driving past, putting bullets through windows or people’s front doors – anyone could be behind. That’s just the madness and complete lack of moral compass these people have we are dealing with.”
Serena Kennedy, the Merseyside police chief constable, agreed, adding: “They have no regard to the impact and the devastating consequences that using a gun on the streets of Merseyside could have. They are not bothered. They are cowards and they have no regard for people.”
She said her force had seized five Skorpion-type machine pistols in the last two years. “Let’s face it, people aren’t going out and being trained on how to use those weapons. So I think we are seeing the impact of those weapons on the streets of Merseyside.”
Kennedy said despite such shocking high-profile shootings, gun crime in the area had fallen substantially and 2021 had the lowest level of firearms discharges in 21 years.
However, some police force areas have recorded huge rises. Last year, a Guardian investigation found two in three police force areas in England and Wales were experiencing rising gun crime, with one force facing levels six times higher than a decade ago.
While firearms offences had fallen 14% on the whole in the past 10 years – helped by a big fall in gun crime in London – 29 out of 43 police forces recorded an increase in gun crime during that time. In eight of these it had more than doubled.
These gang wars are fuelled by recreational drug users, the Merseyside assistant chief constable Chris Green said. Cashman was a cannabis dealer making upwards of £150,000 a year operating in just a few streets in Dovecot. While these drugs often come from overseas, every drug taker in the UK plays a part.
Green said: “There’s a strong message, if those individuals who at the weekend are partying out in clubs or socialising in houses think they’re not doing any harm by having a line of cocaine or doing whatever they want to do … Everyone involved in the chain is responsible.
“That is the reality. If there wasn’t demand there wouldn’t be supply.”
