Today, my first full-length piece from my travels in London appeared in The Sun. It's an inside-look at the Metropolitan Police Department's Trident squad, which deals exclusively with the issue of black-on-black gun crime in London. This is an issue that in recent years has grown from the city's Afro-Caribbean immigrant communities to include more of the city's poor locals, detectives told me. Trident investigates gun crimes, but a portion of their efforts are dedicated to outreach and public relations campaigns.

The story largely focuses on the massive resources thrown at a case that in many areas would, unfortunately, seem "typical": a man with a criminal record, shot while on a bike in an impoverished part of town. This was not an attempt to decry the effort put forth in Baltimore - the city's resources simply don't match up with its overwhelming gun crime problem, and there's actually much more investigative work going on in a typical Baltimore homicide than meets the eye. Instead, I wanted to showcase the approach being taken in London to what they see as an emerging problem that they are aggressively working to stamp out.

(You may note that the story touches on stringent rules on reporting on crime in the UK. To that effect, the London police had me sign an agreement giving them editorial control over this piece, fearful that I might print something that over here would seem standard but there would be perceived as jeopardizing the case. In the end, they only objected to my describing the victim as someone with a drug record, and we compromised by me taking it out of the first paragraph.)