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YouTube has removed around 30 drill music videos after the UK's Metropolitan (Met) police complained that the lyrics were "inciting" gang violence.

Drill music is a form of trap music originating from the Chicago hip hop scene.

The Met police commissioner Cressida Dick told LBC radio that drill music contains lyrics "about glamourising serious violence: murder, stabbings."

"They describe the stabbings in great detail, joy and excitement," she said. "Extreme violence against women is often talked about."

According to Dick, gangs in London have been producing drill music videos and sending messages to other gangs. "Most particularly, in London we have gangs who make drill videos and in those videos, they taunt each other," she said. "They say what they’re going to do to each other and specifically what they are going to do to who."

In a statement emailed to Mashable, Detective Superintendent Mike West said that gangs attempt to "outrival each other" through these music videos. "What looks like a music video can actually contain explicit language with gangs threatening each other," West said. "There are gestures of violence, with hand signals suggesting they are firing weapons and graphic descriptions of what they would do to each other."

West stipulated that the police had only requested the removal of YouTube videos which they believed increased "the risk of violence." West said the Met will partner with YouTube and Google to "address" and tackle "videos that incite violence".

West said the Met has a database of over 1,400 "indexed videos" which they "assess and use to gather intelligence." Wherever possible, the police "will take action" against people appearing in these videos.

A YouTube spokesperson told Mashable that it has "developed policies" aimed to "help tackle videos related to knife crime in the UK." In the statement, the spokesperson said YouTube felt "deep concern" about the issue.

We work with the Metropolitan Police, The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the Home Office, and community groups to understand this issue and ensure we are able to take action on gang-related content that infringe our Community Guidelines or break the law. We have a dedicated process for the police to flag videos directly to our teams because we often need specialist context from law enforcement to identify real-life threats. Along with others in the UK, we share the deep concern about this issue and do not want our platform used to incite violence.

In 2008, YouTube developed policies to deal with knife and gang crime. Videos in the UK which feature people holding certain weapons in a "threatening manner" get blocked by YouTube.

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