A TOP cop has issued a warning about the return of the country's oldest crime groups and a gang culture that has emerged post-lockdown. 

Youth gangs such as Glasgow’s Calton Tongs and Lanarkshire’s Skulls have re-emerged on the streets and are using social media to showcase their activity, reports the Daily Record.

Will Linden, deputy director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) said: “Some of the names we are hearing again are the ones we saw before.

“Gang names can and do re-appear on places like online. Post-Covid, young people are looking to come together with their peers and some are making the mistake of thinking that’s with gangs.”

“It’s 13, 14 and 15-year-olds. They went into lockdown as children and have come out as teenagers.”

An investigation found dozens of videos and pictures of youths – some linked to gang names from the 70s and 80s – wearing balaclavas and showing off weapons.

Videos posted to Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok showed attacks on rival gang members and threats of violence.

One video, believed to have been shared thousands of times on WhatsApp, shows a brutal attack on a rival group in Glasgow.

Three teenage boys chase another through a train in what is described as a “riot an a hawf”, before knocking him to the ground and filming themselves jumping up and down on his head.

One can be heard shouting “yes” while another shouts “you are knocked out clean”.

Another shows a fight between young girls and boys, understood to be near a school in the Glasgow area, where a boy is punched to the ground and surrounded by half a dozen boys who kick him in the head.

Gangs including the Cranhill Fleeto and Castlemilk Young Team are also named in online videos.

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One Lanarkshire-based youth worker told the Daily Record: “It’s as bad as I can remember. Some parts of Scotland have returned to the dark days where teenagers were scared to leave their schemes.

“Mostly, it’s being driven by Covid. Boredom because everything was shut.

"Now things have opened again, kids are getting out — and that’s not always good. I’ve heard of gangs names that haven’t been heard of since the 1970s and 1980s. The gangs some of these kids’ grandparents were in.”

The SVRU helped crush Scotland’s gang culture over ten years ago, with violence plummeting to record lows.

But now, Linden warned that their previous success occured before the rise of social media, where small issues can now erupt into violent fights.

He added: “When we started we didn’t have the noise of social media to the same extent. The online world has been good for young people in a lot of ways during lockdown.

“But in other ways it’s helped to antagonise each other.

“The problem with the online world is previously when Johnny said something about Stevie, it would quickly disappear.

“But when its goes online, it never really goes away. Things that were allowed to pass before don’t now – there are constant reminders. And that is driving the violence.”

“Gang violence among young people has never disappeared, it’s not gone away. It’s nowhere near previous levels but we are concerned.”