WTF is happening in London?!

[AngeloMysterioso]

In the last few days alone, there’s been a stabbing outside Liverpool St station, two moped muggers punched a women to the ground for her handbag and phone, and Michael McIntyre was forced out of his car and had his watch taken off him by another pair who smashed his window in whilst his child was in the back!

Even where I live in a pretty boring zone 4 suburb two teenage boys were stabbed a few streets away last week.

I know it’s never been the safest of cities but it feels like it’s got so much worse in the last year or so. What the hell is happening?

And all these women we can't talk about who everyone shouts LTB. If only they took their time instead of rushing into relationships and getting pregnant several times (the usual 'contraception failure' instead of failure to use contraception properly).

Then there's those who hate their MIL's.

Children flourish in happy families, with different ages and generations and genders.

Austerity measures create poverty.
You cant realistically expect people to just accept a feeling of hopelessness and desperation, and that they have no future. If they feel disenfranchised, they are going to take matters into their own hands.

Tougher consequences that may or may not happen next week are meaningless when you have no electricity or food or clean clothes today.

X post with Irma, but yes, that's what I'm getting at.

@Upstart. What austerity measures are making people feel hopeless?

I agree with coolwalking "y don't care if they are caught. Their lives mean nothing to them.

Postcode wars, music and you tube videos that promote gang violence, disenfranchised from normal life, no concept of responsibility and being part of society, aspiring to be drill and grime artists rather than actual jobs, no prospects because no one made them go to school, no value of education, no sense of pride, living in estates when gangs rule."

If you think police cuts are to blame you have a delusional sense of the power of the police. The police cannot solve the issue of children having totally dysfunctional upbringings which mean that yes their lives are meaningless and they do indeed look to gangs/crime for their sense of identity-they have no fear of consequences. It is going to get a lot worse. A big problem is that the justice system is utterly soft in the UK. No fear of consequences because the sentences are so light. I live in the US and we are too far the other way but people know that the punishments will be harsh and that does deter a significant proportion. I feel far safer in a city with tough areas her in the US than I did in many parts of London 10-20 years ago.

This is not about police cuts!! This is about children not getting raised properly in childhood and being self raised on a diet of violence an d crime glorification through rap/movies/youtube. Many of these young criminals have not been taught morals, they have not developed a sense of compassion and empathy and they are lawless. They are children who have had minimal parenting and have made up their own rules which are damaging to our wider society.

I would have to agree police cuts. Of corse cuts need to be made but the police are an essential service. They would have been better off charging weathly parents with children at state schools or means testing pensions.

London is noticeably less safe. Partly police cuts, partly austerity making people desperate and partly a break down in social cohesion because this Government doesn't seem to care about people

back to the case in point. This is not a problem you can arrest your way out of.

so...
increase stop and search
Enforce penalties for knife carrying
address drugs root and branch - remove the criminal gangs. I would hazard a guess that 99 of illegal drugs are not bought by the trainspotting type "junkie" but respectable working people who want a bit of coke, a spot of MDMA etc. Legalise, sell OTC in boots and tax it and attach all sorts of warnings and much of this problem will be eliminated and that goes all the way back to the cartels.

And lets not forget an average drug dealer has a small patch, handles tiny deals and makes less than minimum wage. The freakonomics guy did a huge paper on it - truly illuminating. Most drugs dealing is just an underground MLM scam

Austerity measures create poverty.
But poverty isn't a new thing (except maybe down South). My maternal grandparents & my mum grew up in poverty in Lancashire. But there wasn't the violence of today. People got on with it, they coped, they worked hard and they helped each other out. There wasn't a benefits culture - you earned it or you didn't eat. It was that simple.
If we had a government that threw money at everything where would that lead us? A few years where everything seems great and then boom, up shit creek without a paddle because the money has run out. At which point, yep, everyone will blame the govt and say that they shouldn't have spent what we couldn't afford!

can we please stop banging on about a force that spends £11m on flights and 0.5m on first class luxury travel?

The force claims cuts but it is politically expedient to cut officers but not luxury travel. and by luxury i mean luxury. A first class return to New York is £4000, and while the officer is drinking their £200 a bottle Laurent Perier Grand Siecle champagne and having their pre-flight massage in the Concorde Lounge it is delightfully easy to turn and say - cut a few officers - puts pressure on the ministers.

LifeBeginsAtGin

I guess it can be difficult to imagine what its like to live on Universal Credit, with the Rape clause in place, having to eat from food banks and school dinners, not being able to shower or wear clean clothes, with the threat of eviction if the rent isn't paid and difficulty in finding anywhere to move to with no money.
And that applies to parents who are working.

When you put any population under stress and limit the resources, they all become more agitated and aggressive. Its like screwing the valve down on a pressure cooker and turning up the heat.

Posters who keep listing increasingly stringent penalties are missing the point. Longer tougher sentences would deter you from crime, because you aren't in the same mind set.

If you want people to belong to society you have to treat them as if they do before you try to penalise them for acting as outsiders.
We've created a dog eat dog society and then wonder why people are acting as if they are living on the bottom tier of a dog eat dog society.

But those on UC know the rules. The maximum 2 child limit, the appointments.

Austerity has cut all the services which parents should be providing - youth clubs, childrens centres, in fact our CC's were closed because the people they were aimed at didn't attend. It was the middle class mums who drove to the centres and made use of the baby clubs and play groups.

The scary part of this is people think it’s bad now. If the government report on the Brexit scenario is true. London is going to be a war zone

Upstart - i dont disagree with some of your analysis.

Crime happens because crime pays for little risk. You either arrest your way out of it with after the event policing or you prevent by addressing the profitability element and addressing the risk and interdicting the supply chain.

The commentary on austerity is both flawed and nuanced. When the tories came in 2010 Spending overall was 689Bn. This year, it is expected to be 780Bn. An increase of 100bn over the period is not by any chalk austerity.

However some areas have cut hard and others have had increases, the main losers have been councils but the NHS has been the main recipient. Pay in particular (not Band increases per se but band progression and pensions for NHS have increased dramatically)

All the points above. On TfL Services we rarely see a British Transport Police officer unless there is an immediate threat to life. And because TfL have had their government grant removed by the Conservative Party, it’s pretty much skint, and has cut revenue control officers to the absolute bone. Local yoof knows this, and blatantly fare evades on a regular basis.

TfL asks its staff to report fare evasion, physical and verbal abuse, and ASB on an app. They say it’s to direct resources appropriately. We keep reporting but nothing fucking changes.

I wanted to report an aggressive beggar on my station...ten years ago I could talk to BTP on a non-emergency line within a few minutes. Now they don’t bother answering the fucking phone. We have to email them the issue instead, and maybe an officer might drop by in a week or so, by which time the staff member has moved onto another location, is on a rest day, or holiday. Funny thing, they want statements. HTF can we give detailed statements so long after the event? The worst thing is, I don’t blame the BTP, but the Conservative government for slashing their budget. I work with an ex-BTP officer, who tells me he, and many many others in the police, not just his force but most forces, are planning to leave. Met, City, all of them. They are at breaking point.

On a personal level I am teaching my 11 year old what to do if she sees a gun or knife in a public place, and what to do if she’s mugged. A man got stabbed in the head near my flat when he intervened a mugging of his female friend. I let my kid out on her own, but I have to give her the skills to protect herself. We can only try and protect ourselves because there is no guarantee an officer will be nearby to help.

frustratedoldbag - agree - it is risk versus return. And crime now is low risk of both being caught and of serious consequences afterwards

I knew an old fashioned ACC - his approach - when you have yet foot on the criminals necks, they aint robbing (ACC Assistant Chief Constable).

He was about mximising the risk, minimising the return and disrupting the route to market for the illegal goods

And yes poverty - my parents grew up in poverty - no shoes, no food, 12 people in a small 3 bed terrace with no inside loo and no bathroom at all. No crime. People worked.

Agree with many of frustrated’s points.

@LifeBeginsAtGin When you have nothing, you have nothing to loose. Is that simple enough for you?

Be thankful that you don't understand all this and pray that you are never in position to have to learn.

They are at breaking point because very senior ranks are about ensuring their own comfort and perks rather than protecting front line services.

PaintedHorizons
There was less overt crime because people could lose their jobs for a conviction, they had a job and they hung on to it. In some industries, fathers would pass their job down to their sons.
there were strong Trade Unions, and a sense of community.

We lost all of that under Thatcherism. Conditions today are very different.
(Except for one thing; violence towards women and children is more out in the open. Women no longer have to suffer domestic violence behind closed doors.)

senior ranks are about ensuring their own comfort and perks rather than protecting front line services. Is this opinion or fact?

and crow - those industries were being destroyed by appalling productivity, huge underlying costs and significant overseas competition.

Like her or not - the industrial structural economic reforms of the 80's were needed. and remember we now have more people in full time employment than ever before and have the lowest unemployment rate for 50 years. Losing an empire meant that the captive market of 1bn people for UK manufactured goods disappeared