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?

Who are the victims and who are the murderers, what is their relationship, i.e. strangers or not, gang-related or random, need more info. Any linkies?

I asked my 18 yr old dd why young BME kids are stabbing and shooting each other so much.

I thought she’d have something to add to the debate as 1. She’s a young mixed race woman living in the inner city and mixing with disadvantaged youth (her mates) and 2. There have been 5 stabbings (3 fatal) within 2 miles of my house. Dd has known the perpetrators/victims/witnesses to 3 of them. One of the killers was a boy who was in her primary/nursery class for 6 years. I remember painting his sweet little face at school fetes. He was charged with murder but got off completely on grounds of self-defence, despite coming into the area carrying a knife, jumping out of a car and starting a beef with the victim, who also had a knife. One of the other perpetrators was an 18 year old girl who was in my dd’s class at secondary and had been to my home. She’s gone down for life for killing a 15 year old boy. :-( Another victim who survived a serious stabbing works with my dd.

Dd doesn’t think this is about not enough youth clubs or about deprivation. She feels that carrying knives and being prepared to use them is simply part of youth culture - like chugging energy drinks and spending half your life on instagram. She says people in her peer group carry and use knives because everyone else does and they don’t see it as a big deal. She says loads of her male friends have been stabbed. Her ex boyfriend has 7 scars stab wounds on his body. They just and post pictures and vids of themselves showing off their scars on instagram and making jokes about shanking each other.

So as far as she’s concerned there’s no rhyme or reason for it - it’s just a youth trend. A horrible one. I suspect she’s right.

In which case I’m afraid I think we need more stop and search, higher sentences for carrying knives, and paramedics going into schools in inner city areas explaining how easy it is to kill and be killed with knives, and teaching first aid, so kids know what to do and not to do if they/a friend gets stabbed.

Oh, and I don’t blame the Mayor.

You don’t blame the Mayor who has ended stop and search? A member of the Party who has campaigned (led by Diane Abbot) against stop and search? Well you bloody well should do.

You don’t blame the Mayor who has ended stop and search? A member of the Party who has campaigned (led by Diane Abbot) against stop and search? Well you bloody well should do

I think you need to look at other things. the murder rate in London between September 2016 and September 2017 was lower than places like Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Glasgow and Manchester

The buck stops with the government.Not just this one but previous ones.On every level the government has failed the country unless you are rich.

Carrying knifes and being prepared to use them is part of youth culture. These children are prepared to kill for the post code, it's sad. But a terrible truth.

Maybe youth clubs, youth workers would help. Maybe more support for families that struggle, or kids that get kicked out of school and forgotten. The drug trade has a lot to do with it.

These kids, mostly from conversations I've had want a way to wear top clothes, best trainers and phones, without having to work 9-5 at minimum wage.

I work with kids just like these, and I have no idea what to do to change it. I fear for my son and no amount of money would make me raise kids in London.

If Khan put as much effort into tackling poverty & social policing as he does on extorting money from motorists he'd save a lot more lives. Ironically the drivers he's hitting hardest are the drivers of older vehicles, precisely the demographic that could do without extra costs & are already in or close to poverty.

The buck stops with the government.Not just this one but previous ones.On every level the government has failed the country unless you are rich.

Even that is a bit simplistic, I don't want a fully authoritarian state and there will always be people who live outside of the law, and whatever law is introduced it will negatively impact someone somewhere, even if we was to go to full on socialism there would still be a ruling "class" structure.

For me personally we should do away with the war on drugs, that would eliminate ~60% of gang culture as people who need or want drugs could get them legally. I hope that the UK is watching how America pans out with the legalisation of cannabis as a starter

The police have my sympathy.

Their numbers and funding are cut by the government. They do their best to deal with the situation, but they get criticised by politicians when stabbing and gun crime increase. If they take robust action to tackle the problems, they are called racists by different politicians.

Good luck, boys & girls in blue....

Schools being pushed to their absolute limits, plus the slashing of non statutory support services like Family Intervention. That leads to a greater call for CAMHS and Social Care, which have also been slashed and are waaaaay underfunded, to a dangerous level.

That means no early intervention, escalating SEMH issues in young people and BAM.

Stop and search does not help when its the same subsets stopped again and again. Not everyone with brown and black skin is in a gang and by continually being stopped because you have brown/black skin, it means that when the police do come knocking for enquiries and help, then why help as they are not being seen as on your side. It alienates more than it helps. Stop and search should be used

as intended but not more and punitively in one community or culture than for any others.

The gang and Mcmafia culture are rife and ascerberated by poverty, lack of jobs, lack of aspiration and rubbish schooling. These have really made inroads into many communities over the last 8 years.

Closing youth centres and libraries, reducing charity funding, reducing police on the streets and their funding, reducing mental health provision (which has been dire for years but far worse in the last 8 years), reducing cab, reducing social care budgets and support for families with social problems, reducing social services, reducing drug and alcohol rehab, less able to go to uni even if they want to, mean many that would never be involved in this lifestyle are now involved in it.

There will always be bad people but we are adding the misfortunate, the immature and the poor into a lifestyle that they may never have chosen, if they had others choices and opportunities.

Add to that the people who look like the grenfell residents and who receive scorn from the other members of their society, know it and think fuck it, why not make more money than working in mcdonalds?

The cocaine trade is massive now and who is that they are supplying?Oh yes people in naicer communities like notting hill and the city.

Black and brown foot soldiers often, just young, immature, stupid boys, dying and killing for others profits.

I have little doubt it's austerity and cuts in policing and activities for young people. I remember reading how one deprived area years ago piloted summer activities for the local kids and crime dropped dramatically and stayed down afterwards because they had something else to do and think about than rivalries and simmering arguments. A lot of these kids barely ever get beyond their local neighbourhood and their school if that's further afield. There are kids living on the edges of major city centres who hardly ever enter them or see anything the world has to offer beyond their tiny corner. No wonder their postcode becomes their universe.

"If Khan put as much effort into tackling poverty & social policing as he does on extorting money from motorists he'd save a lot more lives"

Most of his revenue raising powers come from transport.

He can't stop raising money in this way, AND improve transport AND reduce poverty, particularly with a Tory government in power.

And who knows what will save lives.

People are ranting about his failures without fully understanding WHY there has been an increase in violent crime recently. How can he stop it if nobody understands why it's happening?

Youth clubs don’t stop the deep rooted problems. I remember many a child being beaten up on the way home from the same youth groups as those doing the attacking it just made the attackers look more like nice people and put off the innocent childrn eventually and where taken over by the “gangs”.
I’m sorry but if statistically More crime is committed by X type of person then yes they should be stopped and searched more, the same as statistics with insurance polices they look at data and react to it charge those more likely to have an accident more but this Is met with crys of sexisum or being racist rather than fact following. You don’t change the fact that men are more likely to commit violent crime by shouting sexism or the fact that most of these crimes in London are by ethnic minority groups by shouting racist it needs actual action.

Trying to pin this on the Tory government are doing nothing more than political point scoring.

It was only a few years ago that the police said that bobby's on the street where ineffective, that was during the new labour boom.

The issue is multi faceted, our current drug laws need to be addressed, and if some posters do honestly want more bobbies on the street they need to accept that at the moment, statistical analysis means that a certain demographic within hotspot areas will be targeted

The Times last weekend had the crazy juxtaposition of Cressida Dick mentioning middle class drug takers needing to take more heed of the potential impact the drugs trade has on poor communities and some wanky West London mother recounting how creative it was to take LSD at a dinner party.
Kahn actually does have influence over police numbers. He has a flat budget yet has been happy to oversee a significant fall in actual bobbies on the beat.

This is part of what I posted the last time someone suggested that stop and search was "the answer"

The evidence does not support it.

Stop and search has been researched intensively (by the College of Policing and others) and the evidence is that it has a marginal only effect of detecting or preventing crime; but it has a significant adverse effect on community relations with police.

The latter is important in policing terms because the most effective form of investigating crime and stop and search is intelligence led policing and that is directly affected by the state of community relations. So more non-intelligence led stop and searches are both useless and make the situation worse.

In the London area only 14% of stops and searches are for offensive weapons. Stop and search is primarily used for small amounts of cannabis, which many police are now seeing as a waste of time and resources. The more effective policing use stop and search amongst other tools as part of an intelligence led approach .So the number of stop and searches goes down but it is more targeted and often after surveillance etc.

Currently only 17% of stop and searches conducted under PACE Section 1 lead to an arrest. So still a lot of innocent people are being stopped.Training on unconscious bias may help but also a real culture change in the public and media not to fetishise stop and search as a panacea.

The truth is we need more police and particularly detective and intelligence officers to make policing in London more effective.We also need a restoration of youth services as they were both a counter to the grooming going on in drugs gangs of younger teenagers and a source of police intelligence.

“He has a flat budget yet has been happy to oversee a significant fall in actual bobbies on the beat“

He has the budget to compensate for the giant cuts in police funding from central government, while also addressing our housing crises and appalling public transport problems?

To those who keep saying that a reduction in funding for "community outreach" and "Community Engagement" or "Community Centres" is responsible for an increase in Murder, Attempted Murder , Stabbings and of course the good old Acid attack.... Have you any evidence that these initiatives reduce this type of crime ? At all ?

I mean do you really think that a gang of 8 on mopeds are going to quit their £800 a day dealing profits for a nice cup of tea in the community centre and a nice game of fucking ping pong ?

This situation needs the reintroduction of targeted stop and search (where there is a suspicion of an offence or a carried weapon) AND a serious discussion on the legalisation of drugs. Oh and sentences that are a deterrent !

Freudian
Targeted stop and search does not need reintroducing ....it has not gone away.

What has happened since Best Use of Stop and Search (BUSS), the Teresa May initiative is more training and much greater, independent scrutiny of the stops and searches (as dip sampling by her Majestys Inspectorate found that 1 in 3 forms were actually unlawful as they did not show reasonable suspicion of an offence having been committed).

So the number has reduced because the officer has to record the suspicion and knows that they will be pulled up by managers if the grounds are dodgy.

Where I live there is definitely an issue with young Somali men. Crime after crime are Somali on Somali. Is this due to something in their background or culture or is it because a high number of the young black men in this area happen to be from Somali backgrounds? There is also a large Bangladeshi community but it doesn't seem to be the same

stop and search targets people who are not responsible
the people who murder people are responsible simple as

people really bringing race into this like half the victims aren't white
"young ethnic males" oh is that including the 78yr old who stabbed a burglar?
and does it include ferne maccans ex (who is white) and carried out an acid attack.

it is nothing to do with race it is a mix of things such as fatherless homes, drug taking, boredom.

Dailymail readers really are the idiots of society and a big problem in general you believe the sky is green if the media manipulated you too.

This is Austerity™️

Wait til Brexit bites,

it is nothing to do with race it is a mix of things such as fatherless homes, drug taking, boredom.

You're wrong, it is race too, just as much as any of the other things you've listed and it's perfectly acceptable to discuss that element and it doesn't make us racist or "DM readers" to do so.