Gun crime

[malificent7]

I am appalled by the recent events in Liverpool. I used to live there and I love it very much. It never used to be that bad.

Is it the rising cost of living, drugs etc?

I know that London has similar violence but more knife orientated. I feel sheltered in my little country market town.

It's drugs and gangs and the trade and exploitation that the middle classes are happy to fund.

Plus the deprivation that makes children and young people vulnerable to the exploitation

It's not a cost of living thing... It's gang issue. One killing is believed to be mistaken identity.

It is a gang issue, but what needs to be discussed is why we have such a gang problem.

There's a tendency to dismiss anything gang related as something that happens tonother people and only those who deserve it, when in reality most members are or were exploited children.

It's gang crime ultimately which is running rife due to years of woeful underfunding of the police service.

The news today is horrifying. That poor, innocent little girl 😔

They are and I wasn't dismissing that.
There is a deprivation and/or lack of visible potential futures issue in these areas making them vulnerable to be coaxed in, I don't think anyone could deny that.
But this last few days isn't caused by cost of living (which will now feature on any problem I guess).

The police need to stop dancing at pride festivals and start patrolling the streets

Being from Liverpool myself i can tell you alot of these young lads are shooting eachother over a postcode.Different areas fighting with eachother and the same happened up in Glasgow for years although ithink its calmed down up there.My heart goes out to the families of those young girls and i hope those responsible rot in jail for the rest of their lifes.Sadly this wont be the last time you hear of these things happening in Liverpool.

No, it's not to do with the current cost of living crisis. The areas most affected have been suffering terrible levels of deprivation for decades.

The latest reports are saying the household involved had no known connection to either of the men involved.

Agree @Georgeskitchen police patrolling the streets is what this country needs much, much more of. Desparately. But also, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't as the fury over stop and search often highlights. It's all very broken.

"Decent" people could stop supporting the trade?

How does ‘patrolling’ the streets stop gun crime. What utter drivel. I suggest you stop voting Tory if you want to see some improvement in your public services

Don't you think a better police presence in general would help stop things from getting out of control? People don't go from zero to running around shooting each other.

And are you suggesting I vote Tory? What a weird assumption. I don't, not that it matters.

No it won’t. Standing about in yellow jackets doesn’t have much impact on the sort of serious organised crime that was behind last nights vile and reckless display of violence.

What does help is the sort of ‘back office’ functions that were culled in austerity for ‘efficiency savings’. Things like detectives, CSIs, intel officers, budgets for forensics and scientists. We are wildly understaffed in these areas for the problems we are facing.

Officers enjoying themselves whilst policing events that have to be policed anyway makes bugger all difference.

The police dancing at Pride are out on patrol and participating in community events is one way to try and create a situation where people will talk to them. People in that community know who these people are. Policprobabky know who they are but they're going to need witnesses.

It's a tiny part of the process but this didn't happen because some police officers enjoyed a day at work.

Police presence is completely valid at Pride and nice to see them making good relationships with public but more presence on streets and patrolling in general needed all over the country. Cities and rural. There just isn't enough deterrent and inevitably some people who start out in petty crime will eventually escalate to joining the gang culture. Obviously, there are other factors and it's more complex than this but the devastating cuts to police service hasn't bloody helped matters.

Ah yes you're so right. Remember Tony Blairs "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"?
That went well didn't it!!

We lived in one of those postcodes in Liverpool that was very high crime. We could see it bubbling up for years. A complex mix of austerity (cuts to policing, youth services) and deprivation. The local authority has been abysmally managed for decades. The school system is archaic and overly controlled by religious organisations. This means the MC can play the system and keep their kids in safer faith schools, and the rest of us got dumped in the local sink school, which impacts aspirations and relationships with the wider community.

We left. It was only going to get worse.

My heart goes out to that poor girls family.

I'm no Tory fan but are the Left any better? All the people I know who support BLM/defunding the police, profess to be anarchists etc, they're all devout lefties.

But the conservatives actually have defunded the police

It did actually. There was significant investment after Rhys Jones was killed. That progress went in the bin because ‘do more with less’. We are doing less with less. I won’t blame anyone for last night other than the vile people involved. But we have the police service that we pay for. Like all our other services.