Since the complaints by Scotland Yard, dozens of clips were removed from Youtube. However, it is unclear whether all of them involved drill.
"Drill music is associated with lyrics which are about glamorizing serious violence: murder, stabbings. They describe the stabbings in great detail, joy and excitement. Extreme violence against women is often talked about. Most particularly, in London we have gangs who make drill videos and in those videos, they taunt each other. They say what they're going to do to each other and specifically what they are going to do to who," the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, told LBC radio earlier this month.
READ MORE: YouTube Talks the Talk but Does It Walk the Walk Over Murderous Gang Videos?
London has been plagued by a wave of violent crime in the first quarter or so of 2018, with gang violence remaining prevalent. The Met Commissioner said earlier this year that London gangs are very violent," while Labour MP David Lammy, who has represented the inner city area of Tottenham for 18 years told reporters the violence on the capital's streets was the worse he had ever seen.
READ MORE: Gang Murders in London 'A National Epidemic', Criminologist Tells Sputnik
A Tottenham gang has claimed to be behind the killing of 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne, who was shot in the chest on April 2 in north London.
Drill music is rooted in a style of trap music originating on the South Side of Chicago. With lyrics that tend to be violent, the genre has reportedly become popular in Britain. Fears over the influence drill music videos may have on the British youth have promoted the police to eventually request their removal from YouTube.
In turn, UK drill crew 1011 have started a petition to have their videos reinstated and to stop banning them from YouTube.
A YouTube spokesman said: "We have developed policies specifically to help tackle videos related to knife crime in the UK and are continuing to work constructively with experts on this issue."
