Streatham: isnt it awful that this is the new norm?

[yolofish]

Man with a knife stabs at least two people in a shop in Streatham, South London. Man shot dead by police.

Isnt it dreadful that this seems to be new norm - only 2 other people hurt, not much to see here, move along now?

Like the gun crime too - we just seem to accept it.

Makes me very sad.

People being released early from prison to go on and commit horrendous crime,seems to be the Norm these days

Yet hundreds of prisoners get released from prison every day without going on to commit "horrendous crime".

Don't people on here understand what "the norm" means?

I agree something has to change & think of how demoralising it is for the police & paramedics to have to face this. They have to confront at least the threat of bombs & shoot to kill

Incidents like this finish within 24 hours. For either perpetrators or victims.. I'm hoping I've picked this up wrong as l don't think the ramifications of this will be over for the victims in 24hrs?

"Around four years ago there wasn't the stabbings that there are now"

Seriously? 😂🤷🏽‍♀️ of course there was. Ahhh, 2016, the era of little knife crime.

Prisons seem to be places in which radicalisation is furthered, not where it is countered. That needs to change

Yes. There is no point just locking terrorists up and then releasing them. If they have been brainwashed by radicalisation there needs to be serious research into how to effectively defuse people.

People being released early from prison to go on and commit horrendous crime,seems to be the Norm these days

The probation service has been decimated. They also have a lot of empty posts because the work is now so awful. This means that supervision of ex-offenders and intervention when they're at risk of reoffending isn't what it used to be.

In fact, it's light years away from what it was 20-25 years ago, despite terrorism not really being much of a thing on the UK mainland back then.

Of course it’s not a norm.
In 2017-18, when there were 285 killings, the highest figure since 1946.
One in four victims were men aged 18-24.

The figures also show 25% of victims were black - the highest proportion since data was first collected in 1997.

Most were not stabbing by strangers or terror related. Those 285 deaths are tragic but minimal when compared to a population of 68 million.
Sadly, more young people are carrying knives and rivalries end up with serious injuries. That’s about parenting and knowing where your children are and what they are doing. Which parent in their right mind would allow their child to hang around with lots of disaffected youngsters and carry knives?
It’s also, in part government policy to reduce support services for younger children. Children’s centres closed so fewer parenting classes, youth clubs almost non existent, schools pastoral care cut to the bone because of reduced funding, few EWOs to pick up on truanting.
The cultural drive to have lots of designer items as a status symbol is also part of the problem as it fuels crime and jealousy and serves nobody but the design company.
Add in drugs and tolerance of a drug culture and conditions become ripe for youngsters to be injured or killed.

@SW16, what excellent well written sensible posts. Thank you, for putting into words my thoughts, from another Streatham-ite.

Thank you Super-duper

Good to see so many Streatham-and-Nearby posters.

Prison unfortunately is both where radicalisation starts and for others it is furthered

You have many young men with mh issues or those that start to become unwell in prison they are vulnerable to any manipulation

Many are sitting ducks prisons are so overwhelmed prisoners often have very little time out of their cells it creates a very volatile situation that is a perfect breeding ground for this

We don't really have any provision to lock people up because they might commit a crime/further crimes in the future.

And if we did try to make that provision, there would be outrage and it would never be allowed to happen!

I know what you mean about "the new norm" OP. Although terrorist attacks in the UK are infrequent (thankfully!), they're no longer surprising and when I hear that there's been an attack, it doesn't shock me in the same way that it would have done 15 years ago. It sounds like the police were on the scene very swiftly - I hope the victims are ok.

I was in London in the 80s, and there was definitely an awareness of the danger of IRA bombing, which went on into the 90s. Although many of the targets were soldiers and politicians, and warnings were frequently given, quite a lot of people were actually killed when car bombs went off in various places. I remember being more scared of the dangers of the parts of South London I lived in - mainly Brixton. I rented a room just off Acre Lane, where few friends would visit me after one got mugged on the way to visit me. I then got attacked by a burglar in the same house, and later on just managed to avoid being involved in the 1985 riots, where (I've just checked) one person died. Quite clearly, the main difference between then and now was the instant news aspect. I remember phoning my parents on the landline after the night of the 1985 riots to reassure them I was fine and planning to stay indoors for the rest of the day, but other than local radio I had no real idea of what was going on.

It's not a 'norm', it's one of a handful of attacks,
We should be thankful firearms are so tightly regulated here, stabbings are awful but the damage is limited compared to the damage done with guns and explosives.

Looks like he was under surveillance by armed officers

so clearly considered dangerous

I suppose what I meant by 'norm' is that no one is surprised any more by stabbings, shootings, terror attacks, hate crimes etc.

We care, but actually then we just seem to shrug our shoulders and say 'well what do you expect in '.

I dont pretend to have the answers, that's for the govt, the police, the judiciary. I'm just surprised that we are no longer surprised.

No of course its not the norm. Terrorist attacks remain rare.

What is the norm (and not just in 'isn't it awful' London...) are cuts in essential public services that are making it harder for the police, prison services, mental health services, social workers, youth workers etc to provide proper support.
The social safety net is in tatters.

It isn't really religion that is encouraging atrocities, its poverty.

Its highly unlikely that a teenager from a privileged background, with ample family and financial support, would end up carrying out a terrorist attack. Or become a member of a violent gang. Or deal drugs.

So yes we can increase the police presence and keep people locked up and keep ourselves safe by driving everywhere or living on secluded expensive estates - but crime will continue to increase whilst those who govern prioritise the wants of the privileged few over those most in need.

I agree, Yolo. Also the knife crime - a teenager’s murder used to make hational headlines, but now they just mention the numbers per year.

terrorist attacks are not rare

But we're no longer surprised by them are we? I mean, we just kind of accept that this shit (along with the rest I mentioned earlier) just happens.

I remember living in London back in the IRA days; we seemed to be much more on the alert (perhaps as pp said because it was a structured organisation) but we didnt seem to just accept events.

Whereas nowadays there seems to be a kind of thinking which says - this is going to happen, let's hope it's not to me or mine.

Maybe I'm not making sense!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_Kingdom

If you look at the number of terrorist incidents in the UK over the last 50 years there are peaks and troughs but this absolutely isn't the worst it's been. It might feel like we're more a risk then ever but it's a perception of risk due to the way it is reported.

Look at the coverage in the media of the things people die from vs. the things people actually die from.

ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png

It's hard not to feel threatened when the volume of reporting is inverse to the actually risk.

I remember living in London back in the IRA days; we seemed to be much more on the alert (perhaps as pp said because it was a structured organisation) but we didnt seem to just accept events.

Also traditional terrorism is much easier to stop then lone wolf scenarios that we have now days.

People being released early from prison to go on and commit horrendous crime,seems to be the Norm these days

Dunno about ‘horrendous’, but the rate of recidivist crime is definitely very high. Repeat offenders sometimes deliberately re-offend in order to be put back inside.

* incidents in the UK over the last 50 years there are peaks and troughs but this absolutely isn't the worst it's been* It might feel like we're more a risk then ever but it's a perception of risk due to the way it is reported.

I don't necessarily agree with this although I take your point on the reporting.

When I visit Belfast & Dublin now (Irish family) yes I feel much safer than I did in the 90s. In London yes there are a lot less assassination attempts & bomb scares these days. However I feel less safe & more of a target in London these days simply because Islamic terrorists have killed so many people. I have a French family too & definitely feel less safe there than my youth.

That's because cutbacks mean that there are limited rehabilitation programs and prisoners are just shoved in a cell for most of the day.
Prison shouldn't be a holiday camp but there is no point in just locking people up without trying to tackle the issues that caused them to get locked up in the first place. If you don't rehabilitate prison will always be a revolving door.

This particular person shouldn't have been released clearly. If he was dangerous enough to be under 24 hour police surveillance he was a risk to the public.

I agree that it's perception. Really far more people in the UK and Ireland died as a result of terrorist and extra government forces than have been killed in the whole of Europe since 2001. As for not accepting events during the campaign, my memory is that we did. It got so normal to be pulled off the tube due to a bomb scare that even when it was a real one people weren't freaked any more. Sure, there was a kind of low level "is this the one?" sort of thinking but I don't remember a great deal of angsting about it. Whether that's a good thing or not I really couldn't say. I think that the world trade centre attack has a lot to do with it - it was so shocking, and involved such huge numbers of people, so everyone is more wary now.

Also re all terrorists are disadvantaged kids, I don't think this is true. Certainly in places like Pakistan, but in the UK our homegrown terrorists are almost always middle class sometimes even upper class, very often men, who have the time and intellectual energy to devote to in depth rationalisation of holy words to violence. A lot of them are graduates from well regarded universities, a lot from "good" families. In the UK at least this isn't an issue of poverty.