The Student Room Group

London violence could take a generation to solve claims Mayor

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46095279

There have been 118 homocides in the capital to date this year, this compares to 116 for the whole of last year.

This also comes as the met police commander announced hundreds of extra officers on the streets, although police numbers have dropped since 2010.

What is causing this rise in knife crime? Why are people carrying knives around? How do we combat this?

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Ban knives?
Nothing to loose fom looking at other examples, New York didn't clean up their act significantly by just hoping for it to go away at some point like our Mayor seems to wish. Many factors go into all this but Mayor Giuliani is associated with what they called 'zero-tolerance' and that meant imposing the rule of law at the most basic levels to try and deter people from making it up the scale unchecked.

That would mean coming down heavily on things like shop-lifting or graffiti spraying, nipping it in the bud as we say over here. We have a far too permissive attitude towards all that, with teenagers forging a criminal career on the back of a chain of slaps on the wrist. Singapore springs to mind, they must be doing something right. What can we learn from it?

Alas, our Mayor symbolises the political movement that wouldn't have any of that. He sounded feeble yesterday, with nothing useful to say. Even Piers had him on the ropes, that bad.
(edited 5 years ago)
The very least that needs to be done across England is to double prison sentences for carrying a knife, as what has happened in Scotland.
The reduction in Stop And Search has also contributed to an increase in knife crime, so although controversial, this power is necessary.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/stop-and-search-is-our-best-weapon-in-the-fight-against-crime/
Reply 4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_Kingdom#Race_and_crime_in_London

Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that in 2007 an estimated 10.6 percent of London's population of 7,556,900 were black.[25] Evidence shows that the black population in London boroughs increases with the level of deprivation, and that the level of crime also increases with deprivation, such that "It is clear that ethnicity, deprivation, victimisation and offending are closely and intricately inter-related".[26]

In June 2010, through a Freedom of Information Act request, The Sunday Telegraph obtained statistics on accusations of crime broken down by race from the Metropolitan Police Service.[n 2] The figures showed that the majority of males who were accused of violent crimes in 2009–10 were black. Of the recorded 18,091 such accusations against males, 54 percent accused of street crimes were black; for robbery, 59 percent; and for gun crimes, 67 percent.[27] Robbery, drug use, and gang violence have been associated with black people since the 1960s.[28] In the 1980s and 1990s, the police associated robbery with black people. In 1995, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Condon said that the majority of robberies in London were committed by black people.[29]

Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob, and snatching property. Black males accounted for 29 percent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 percent of the male victims of knife crime.[27] On sex offences, black men made up 32 per cent of male suspects. Similar statistics were recorded for females. On knife crime, 45 percent of suspected female perpetrators were black; for gun crime, 58 percent; and for robberies, 52 percent.[30]
Operation Trident was set up in March 1998 by the Metropolitan Police to investigate gun crime in London's black community after black-on-black shootings in Lambeth and Brent.[31]

Between April 2005 and January 2006, figures from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that black people accounted for 46 percent of car-crime arrests generated by automatic number plate recognition cameras.[32]




"It's the knives that are the problem. The knives I tell ya! Get rid of the knives and everything will be fine!"
Under a competent mayor and government, it wouldn't take a generation to solve.

For starters, they're focusing on the wrong things. For example, it's not knives that are the problem. Knives are ubiquitous kitchen tools Londoners have always had. The problem is the people motivated to go around using them as weapons - gangs and (unfortunately) black and minority youth in particular. So things obviously became worse when police were told to stop their 'racist' stop-and-search procedures.
There were three more stabbings today in London alone but some people would be surprised to know what the daily average is. Could have been three more deaths and at least one is critical, maybe a good day after all. We do have some serious problems in our country and the trend isn't a friendly one, even worse is the realization that nobody is at the helm either.
Reply 7
There is an elephant in the room here so to speak that seems to be going ignored: youth culture.

I don't know how many people here know, but schools are increasingly places where pre-teens and teenagers are being infected with gang culture, and this even includes those who have nothing to do with gangs. The way you hear kids talk these days, the bullish verbalisation of words and accent, everyone thinking they are a 'badman' is terrifying.

When i was in school, yes, it was a place where children often coming from a deprived upbringing struggled, found peace in a group or gang in school, and engaged in terrifying bullying, physical violence, drugs and sex; it mirrored how apes act , purely by instinct , ruthless, before the inevitable development of the prefrontal cortex and maturation later in life that is the salvation of the human. However people as a whole talking , acting and conforming to gang culture despite not even being in a gang does seem to be on the increase.

I hear girls aged 11,12,13 on the bus engaged in discussing violence, utter abuse you are startled is actually directed at another human being, and in that same accent/gangster style of speaking. Some of these are Muslim, who have parents under the assumption their son or daughter is that innocent and polite person they thought they raised. Parents, you have no idea what your kids do behind you , and the effect of peer pressure.

As a caveat, I wonder what role social media has had in all of this, and the ease of accessibility of phones , improvement in technology, and the like.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 8
In London, different neighbourhoods and estates have their own gang, what the so-called 'gangsters' term as their 'ends'. They engage in 'rap battles', acts of violence, and actually have rather interesting dominance hierarchies so i have heard.

The young look up to their older brothers and bullish sisters involved in these gangs, be they white, asian, black or whatever other group. They hear their sister use vulgar language, tear another human being apart like a sociopath, act narcissistic and what do you think they will imitate and copy?

They see their brother engage in a 'rap battle', shoot someone or physically torture another to get into a gang, and take illegal drugs. Consider how useful and loved might they feel as we tend to hear from stories, as the young individual the gang uses to smuggle drugs around?

What hope do these people have? Often from dysfunctional families, run down neighbour hoods, very little hope of buying any property in the highly overinflated prices we find in London, poor access to opportunities, often lacking a father figure. They find love in their gang they perhaps lack from a functional family, opportunity selling drugs and making money when they might not see any way through the education system.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 9
It can be ruthless.

Here's the thing, if someone decides to stand up to a bully, there is a notable probability he might get killed, after school or at another point in time, and if not killed, perhaps dealt severe physical damage and psychological torture during essential years of development.

Parents these days have got to hope their kids have a way of staying under the radar, thinking ahead of time and not getting involved. It takes one moment of standing up to a bully and that can lead to devastating consequences.

Some of the women also demonstrate ape-like behaviour, often out of pure jealousy of another 'competitor' female. I'm not even exaggerating here, some girls will torture and bully another purely because they are jealous she is perceived to be physically more attractive. There seems to be matriarchies in place, with one dominant female and orbiters who seek validation and protection with her.

Of course, generally most kids aren't that involved with this, but a rotten apple will spoil most of the bunch.
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Wōden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_Kingdom#Race_and_crime_in_London





"It's the knives that are the problem. The knives I tell ya! Get rid of the knives and everything will be fine!"

So don't ban knives. Ban blacks?

Seems like my nan was right all along.
Original post by Tawheed
There is an elephant in the room here so to speak that seems to be going ignored: youth culture.

Well, is there? You make a really good contribution in terms of describing the picture but now that we have established there is such thing as that 'youth culture' (there's always been one, presumably)... where do we go from there? I feel free to ask because I've inserted my own 'constructive' tuppence in this thread already.

This is a problem with so many roots that there is no 'solution' for it, all we can aspire to is to trim the bush we've grown back a bit. They did have all this gang culture in New York in the 80s and now they don't. Not as much, anyway.
Reply 12
There were white gangs in London in the 50s - The Krays & The Richardsons and various gangs and mobsters in New York, Chicago etc in the 20s. The Government eventually got their act together and went for "the head of the snake", and the body.

In Italy, the Mafia continued a long time (and still does in Sicily!) becuase they had infiltrated (bribed) law enforcers.
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by DrMikeHuntHertz
Ban knives?

IIt's not the knives that are the problem ...it's those holding them and stabbing people .
Original post by Johnny English
IIt's not the knives that are the problem ...it's those holding them and stabbing people .


I don’t think it was a serious suggestion, more of a suggestion designed to mock the way people are so quick to call for the banning of guns after shootings in America
Original post by Johnny English
IIt's not the knives that are the problem ...it's those holding them and stabbing people .

Then why did we ban guns?
Original post by DrMikeHuntHertz
Then why did we ban guns?

Guns have one purpose. Knives have non murdering purposes.
Reply 17
We have already banned the possession of offensive weapons in public places. And the sale of knives is monitored (though probably not strictly enough given recent events).
Original post by DrMikeHuntHertz
Ban knives?


Ban knives?

How am I meant to chop my onions you pillock.
Reply 19
Glasgow used to be the knife capital of Europe, it isn't anymore. They had a holistic approach, anything and everything which led to crime they targeted so the solution is not one thing it's various.

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