To wonder who is actually responsible for rising murder rates in london

[SaucyJane]

So slimy frog faced Nigel Farage is blaming Sadiq Khan as mayor and particularly for reducing stop and search. There are also other calls for Khan to resign.

But surely there is only so much Khan can do if the government makes huge cuts to the police. And weren't those cuts made under Maggie May?

I didn't vote for Khan to be the mayor, and I am no fan of his, but it seems to me that it is unfair to blame it on him, and that the answer is probably partly government cuts and partly some of his changes since being mayor.

AIBU?

I'm not sure what Sadiq Khan can be expected to do on this backdrop.

Well how about doing the same as every other police force in the country who aren’t having the same problems for a start?

Beginning with rolling out stop and search to pre-Khan levels?

I'd say it was drugs and gang warfare causing the problems. And there should be more police around not less. All this softly softly community approach doesn't always work.

I was under the impression that there had been a spike in gang activity unrelated to changes to the police force. I'm not really in the know though.

Gangs. Kids from broken backgrounds.

You can't blame cuts to services on everything - people need to start being responsible for themselves.

Not true mighty

London is unique in the country in a lot of ways, unfair to say the ONLY difference is the mayor so he is personally responsible for everything bad that happens here.

Is he responsible for everything good as well, by the way?

"people need to start being responsible for themselves"

These are children - how does that work?
The girl who was murdered yesterday - how does your advice pan out for that type of situation?

Cuts to services including education and social care
Poverty
Low expectations
Social media

Basically these kids have got nothing to lose.

I watched this the other day, a Livvy Haydock documentary about the moped gangs. I think a lot of what she talks about has parallels in general. I find it shocking that young men in London, the capital city, feel they have no hope and crime is the best/easiest way to make money and support themselves.

There has been a huge reduction in services, where early intervention into stopping young people joining gangs, or even just giving them someone to speak to could have helped. Fewer police on the street, weakening community relations & intelligence can't help either. This is all a result of austerity.

A lot of it goes back generations too, regarding hope and what people turn to. The Being Blacker documentary also brought this home to me.

Openup41 How on earth can EVERYONE be stopped and searched? How many police officers do you think there are?

New York is now considered to be a safer city than London. Both cities have similar populations, number of police officers and same policing budgets.
The difference in crime between the two cities is suggested to be down to the difference in policing.

An interesting article...

.www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/20/london-now-dangerous-new-york-crime-stats-suggest/

I think pretending a spike in gang activity has nothing to do with the near abandonment of stop and search is disingenuous in the extreme.

Of course taking part in gang activity is more attractive if you know there is very little chance of getting caught.

And gangs aren’t exclusive to London. If it was caused by other drivers of gang related activity like an excess of drug availability or high drug prices creating big profits then you would be seeing the same happen in other cities with gang cultures like Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham. But it’s not.

Sadiq Khan's silence on the issue speaks volumes I'm afraid. I am shocked and disgusted by the amount of young people killed over the last month and Khan has had absolutely nothing to say on it. His Deputy spoke on Channel Four New last night and it just gives the impression he is running scared and hiding behind her skirt.

Tory austerity measures have certainly contributed.

*Poverty
*Cuts in Policing
*Cuts in Social Services
*Cuts in Education
*Cuts in Health Services
*Cuts in Mental Health Services

Is he responsible for everything good as well, by the way?

Like what? Transport, yes in some ways. Although it’s important to remember that he has been mayor for less than two years and in terms of infrastructure what we see now is the product of the work of previous mayors.

I’m not aware of any particularly positive Khan initiatives. Certainly not any which would be successful enough to ameliorate the industrial rate killing going on and make it worthwhile.

There really isn’t anything unique enough about London to explain it in any other way apart from failures in Khan’s policing policies.

The cuts are national. Social initiatives will have been cut just as much in Moss Side as they are in Dalston.

Young men without hope or access to jobs or education are actually much more likely to exist outside London. All the excuses of ‘it’s the cuts’, ‘it’s young people with no hope’ - if that was the cause it would be happening outside London in the same way because the same things are happening there.

But it’s not.

Because no matter how you try and spin it making a very profitable but illegal lifestyle more attractive by making the risk of getting caught much lower means more people are going to get involved in that lifestyle and the associated violence is going to rocket.

It was an incredibly fucking dumbass idea. And the sort of people who advocated in the first place will never admit that. Because they don’t actually care about poor young black people who are being killed, they just care about polishing their liberal credentials. And they will quite cheerfully sacrifice another hundred or so poor young black people on their liberal altar than admit they were wrong.

When you become so disenfranchised by society that you have nothing left to lose then this is the end result.

That said, the story doing the rounds is misleading. It's not that London has somehow significantly surpassed NY as a homicidal-hub, it's that NY has seen a decline.

"To wonder who is actually responsible for rising murder rates in london"

The murderers?

Tory austerity measures have certainly contributed.

Poverty
Cuts in Policing
Cuts in Social Services
Cuts in Education
Cuts in Health Services
Cuts in Mental Health Services

These have taken place everywhere. So if these were the causes this increase in murder would be happening everywhere. But it’s not. Because those cuts clearly aren’t what is to blame here.

20,000 fewer police?

Mightymucks Just come out with it.
Oddly enough you seem to be making false equivalences between London and other cities/regions of the UK. For one or two reasons, I think London might be slightly different.

20,000 fewer police?

Yes. Nationally. So if that’s the cause then why aren’t the murder numbers going up everywhere?

Asking why London has a higher murder rate than other U.K. cities is a little disingenuous, as the population of London is 7x larger than the next most populous city.

"TheDukesOfHazzard

Apparently there are some reports saying "SHOCK london murder rate now worse than new york!!!" but if you look, london is reltively static and NY is coming DOWN. So real headline would be - "Great news! NY murder rate down!"."
I made a very similar point when we had the recent news story that prostate cancer had overtaken breast cancer. Was mainly shouted at and told I wasn't understanding the issues.