A 17-year-old was fighting for his life last night after being shot in the face on Christmas Eve, as a year in which 24 teenagers were murdered in London approached its violent end.

At the same time, a community leader gave warning that youths were being shot dead in Britain’s cities because black people were choosing to settle their own scores rather than go to the police. Scotland Yard admitted that most serious “black-on-black” crimes were going unsolved.

The latest shooting happened at about 6pm on Christmas Eve, while holidaymakers strolled along the Thames Path in Wandsworth, southwest London.

A few yards away, in Gartons Way, the boy was shot and critically injured as he sat in a parked car close to a Homebase store and the London Battersea Travelodge hotel.

Neighbours described how armed police flooded the area as he was taken to a South London hospital, where his condition was described as stable. Two hooded black men were seen running from the scene.

The shooting is being investigated by Operation Trident, which deals with crimes where victims and suspects are black.

Tunde Banjoko, chief executive of the Leap inner-city employment and regeneration agency, has urged blacks to change their attitudes to the police.

One of his past clients was a teenager who went on to stab the white solicitor Tom ap Rhys Pryce to death in a notorious robbery.

Mr Banjoko told The Times: “The black community do not trust the police. This goes back to those black people who were born and brought up in England in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties feeling that we were disproportionately targeted and harassed by the police.

“As a result of this mistrust, it became a major tenet of black culture not to go to the police if one witnesses a crime, that being an ‘informer’ is one of the worst things you could be. The black community effectively, through choice, then do not have the same level of protection by the police that others do and a vigilante mindset has formed that has led to the slaughter of black youths in our cities.

“Their actions are often disproportionate and then result in the victims of their actions seeking revenge and it spirals out of control.

“When you combine this general misguided attitude to law and order with those criminals who know that if they target other blacks as victims, the chances of police being notified are very low, you have the current situation on England’s streets.

“This attitude towards police has to change, the black community has to recognise it as a major problem and start addressing it and the police have to ensure that they are perceived to be as receptive to crime in the black community as they are when middle-class white people are victims.”

Mr Banjoko criticised an interview this year when Keith Jarrett, the president of the National Black Police Association, suggested that more searchings of blacks to stop knife killings. Stopping and searching blacks for no other reason than the colour of their skin would reinforce the belief that blacks cannot (or should not) go to the police and the blood of black youths will continue to be spilt at an alarming rate,” Mr Banjoko said.

Detection rates for Operation Trident are running at 44 per cent, compared with a target of 85 per cent.

Trident killings appear to be increasing this year, with nine between April and August. The annual black-on-black homicide rate is about 18.

There were only nine homicides of 13 to 19-year-olds in the capital in 2004-05. But, this year, 24 teenagers have been murdered, including 14 stabbed, nine shot and one where no cause of death was identified.

Police investigating the shooting in Wandsworth have yet to discover the motive. Residents said that the neighbourhood had become prey to drug dealers, driven out of Brixton by fear of CCTV cameras. One local man said that he had been robbed four times. Ministers have been accused of “complacency” for letting armed police numbers fall while gun crime has been soaring. According to figures obtained by the Tories, the number of firearms officers went down from 6,738 in 1997 to 6,584 in 2006, while the total number of reported firearms offences rose more than 10 per cent. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the details showed ministers were “part of the problem”.

Among the casualties

Feb 3 James Smartt-Ford 16, shot during disco at Streatham Ice Arena

Feb 6 Michael Dosunmu 15, shot dead in bedroom after two men broke into house in Peckham. Two men have denied murder

March 17 Adam Regis 15, nephew of the Olympic athlete John Regis, stabbed to death after trip to cinema

April 6 Paul Erhahon 14, stabbed in chest on Good Friday after attack in foyer of flats near his home in Leytonstone. Six teenagers charged with his murder

June 23 Annaka Pinto 17, shot in fight at Swan pub in Tottenham. Tristan Walker, 21, denies murder

Aug 3 Nathan Foster 18, shot dead after teenager opened fire on group of youths near Brixton Tube. Boy, 17, charged with murder

Oct 19 Jonathan Matondo 16, from Congo, shot in Sheffield park. Negus Nelson, 18, charged with murder

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