To say enough is enough and that we need more police on the streets and tougher knife penalties

[Jokingnotjoking]

Another attack on a child - 11 year old girl caught in a headlock and stabbed repeatedly by a man with a knife - out with her Mum in Leicester Square today. I just feel scared to do anything now. It just doesn’t feel ‘rare’. Atrocities are commonplace. I don’t care about the man’s mental health or if it’s terror related. Or his bloody colour.

New government - can you make us safe? Am I unreasonable to ask this?

Sorry if the link doesn’t work.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg5xx0gly8o

We are so smug that we don't have guns in this country, but knives can be just as deadly - you are right op

There's been a stabbing in Manchester this evening too.

Whilst not wanting to comment on these cases directly, the Nottingham case seems to show the extent poor mental health services have been a factor. This needs to be addressed urgently.

In a way I’d say knives are more dangerous weapon. A gun will eventually run of bullets.
You’re right Op and I don’t think anyone could disagree with you. They’d have to be tapped if they did. Children can’t go to a Dance Class or shopping with their mothers. What’s going. It makes you think if they’ll attack kids with no qualms then there’s nothing down for the rest of us. However you can’t live in fear and be a prisoner in your own home at the same time.
It seems an understatement to say “it’s sickening”.

What’s happened recently is horrific, but to say knives are worse than guns is ridiculous.
in 2017 1 man killed 60 people in Las Vegas in the space of 10 minutes.
Today the attacker was tackled & stopped by a bystander - if he’d had a gun that would not have been possible & we would currently be reading about a huge number of deaths in Leicester Square.

We want arts and sport and culture to distract people so they don't turn to crime. + Great early years education so they learn better conflict resolution

It's awful, but people comparing knives to guns are being a bit silly. If the guy had had a gun, mum and daughter and probably more people would be dead. They are alive because he had a knife and not an AK47.

And of course because of the hero who tackled the knifeman, and I feel it's very important given the current climate to say his name on every thread about this attack - thank you Abdullah for risking your life to save two strangers.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment and wish to express my condolences and horror at this to anyone involved I am also questioning what our police and crime commissioners actually do.

I think we also need to review the 2012 legal changes that mean fingerprints are deleted unless there is a conviction. We are potentially missing lots of opportunities to catch repeat offenders.

Knives are not more dangerous ffs 🤦🏼‍♀️

I really don't know what to say but something needs to be done. Do we have worse knife crime than other countries? We need to look at countries where knife crime is rare and find out what they are doing right and what we are getting so wrong.

@Halfemptyhalfling I’m not sure it’s a matter of ‘distracting’ people from committing murder.

More use needs to be made of stop & search. Revert the changes that have made an impossible amount of paperwork to do for each search.

But anyone , anywhere can get access to knives though, we use them to eat our meals sticks and stones are also available.
I will continue to be relieved that I have only seen 2 firearms up close in my entire life.

How quickly you have forgotten attacks like Las Vegas. With a knife you cannot kill 58 people and injure over 800 in the space of 10 mins while being on the 32nd floor of a hotel while the victims are on the ground outside.

Totally agree

It's not a UK that I recognize

Of course knives are not more dangerous than guns. Be sensible.

Tougher knife penalties aren't going to prevent crimes committed by people who are suffering from severe mental health conditions.

If you want to feel safer, you might want to review how little you care about mental health.

I have never thought of that obvious as it is ! I have a fear of knives I don’t have them out on the side, I just treat them with respect. Put yes guns will run out of bullets - a knife can only stab at a certain speed though, a gun has a lot of bullets

we need more police, the population in this country is getting out of control whatever the reason it’s becoming over populated and yet they are reducing the police force.

we need uniforms on the street, and they need the power to act if needed.

i have a friend who’s an armed police officer and he’s leaving as soon as his term finishes for the simple reason that if he pulls his taser let alone his gun he faces being discharged! He feels that if he’s in a situation where it’s life and death he would still be afraid to pull either. He says the training is on talking down, which is good, but he actually said that girl would still have been stabbed once purely because he isn’t allowed to taser before the attacker strikes!

Someone upthread mentioned mental health services - genuine question - what does this look like and does it actually turn people around who would otherwise gone on to murder people? I was still at university when the conservatives came in so I don’t really remember anything like mental health services under labour. Do you mean medication?

There seems to be three or four types of stabbing.

There seems to be a mentally ill lone man stabbing woman and children, and there seems to be young men stabbing other young men in gang, and then but just macho man teen stabbing innocent passer by teen / looked at me the wrong way. The two boys stabbed locally were not stabbed by mentally ill people and were not part of a gang. Apparently knives are also the weapon used in lots of husband kills wife scenarios.

They need different solutions..

Definitely mproved mental health care for these lone women and child killers
I think maybe tackling incel culture online would help too when it comes to the attacking women.

Improved domestic abuse services so women can recognise abuse and leave safely.

But something very different for county lines and the other male on male stabs. I do think bigger penalties for knives might help. There are some existing organisation that support work in this area set up by parents of stabbed young men.

I hate the defund the police rhetoric, we need more of them, and they need to be on the beat, with powers.

Tbh it’s depressing, you can get a suspended sentence for possessing thousands of images of child abuse and a lengthy sentence for going to gawp at a riot. That poor woman who was slashed for turning down a mans advances keeps coming to mind. No prison sentence for that.

I think the figure is something like only 5% of crime get a conviction. It’s repeatedly come up that when members of the public can use location tracking to find their stolen items the police refuse to step in and help recover their items. Actually read an article where the writer had their car stolen, told the police the address and they said they weren’t going to be helping. When you let “little” things like that slide then no wonder we have bigger problems.

I have no idea what the hell is happening but you have some police not doing the basics of their jobs and when police do their job theirs an outcry. If you punch a police officer it is reasonable they use force against you. There was some shit about how a kid with a balaclava and a knife was treated by the police. Or police ramming suspects on mopeds. We are complicit in defanging the police as well. The Manchester incident really demonstrated this, the outcry before the full facts were available. Those two wankers still haven’t been charged but the police officer is being investigated, It’s a joke.

And instead of saying “oh well we don’t have enough space in prisons” build some bloody prisons. For crimes that receive a suspended sentence there should be a heavy fine. If you are a non british citizen you should be deported as soon you are out of prison.

I mean a proper, joined up service. Look at the Nottingham attacker. A schizophrenic descending into increased paranoia and getting more violent all the time. His family leading for help. He’s not taking his medication and the NHS wash their hands of him as he is ‘refusing to engage’b(which I read as ‘we’re rushed off our feet and can’t go looking for him’). He’s ill. He needed to be sectioned until he’s better, not until someone else needed the bed more urgently. Community mental health teams need to be checking his medication and listening to his family when they say that he’s not.

So sad.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn47mm7ggv0o

Usually unfortunately these things are due to mentally ill people suffering from some sort of psychosis and it's spontaneous attacks.
Unlike say serial killers.
So for me the biggest deterrent is throwing money at services and getting more vigilant in secondary schools /colleges to spot people referrals and so on because I don't know how we stop anyone taking a kitchen knife out?