YouTube could be the next battlefield in the war on gang crime in the borough, the Croydon Guardian can reveal. 

The council is considering deploying staff to trawl the video-sharing website in search of gang-related footage. 

YouTube could then be requested to remove videos deemed likely to encourage gang crime or lead to recruitment of new members. 

Croydon Council is contemplating the strategy after it was trialled at another London borough.

Newham Council has forced the removal of 76 videos from YouTube since it began the scheme in January. 

Enforcement offices working for the East London authority, which has operates in one of the country's most deprived boroughs, have found more than 500 gang-related videos. 

Croydon Council confirmed it was looking at employing a similar scheme. 

A council spokesman said: "Croydon Gangs Unit regularly monitors social networking sites and the content is used to inform enforcement action where possible.

“We recently became aware of the work undertaken by Newham and are now considering whether this approach may be useful or achievable in our borough to help disrupt gang activity.”

Croydon has some of the highest levels of gang-related crime in London. 

There were 105 gun crimes in the borough in the last 12 months, the fourth highest in the capital.

It has the fifth highest robbery rate, at 2,016 in the last year.

A YouTube spokesman said: "YouTube's community guidelines prohibit content that's intended to incite violence or encourage dangerous, illegal activities, and we encourage all our users to flag videos for our attention.

"We review videos against our guidelines when notified and remove anything that breaks the rules."