London's Murder Rate

[Antepli Ejderha]

Teenage girl shot dead in Tottenham, north London

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...y_to_clipboard

This is number 47 of the year, most have been stabbings but there seems to be a growing use of guns.

As I work in Enfield I hear a lot about this, crime and gangs and there's a genuine fear among those who work with young people that it's close to becoming out of control, especially as so much is not reported in the media.

Last week there was a little in the news about "county/ city lines " where young people, many not known to the police, are sent outside of London to deliver drugs and collect money. This is a huge issue that has received very little coverage. Check out the metropolitan police missing persons website, see how young the kids are in it, and from personal experience I can say that most of them are being used for this. It's frightening stuff.

[Tubby Isaacs]

From the bare crime statistics (despite the "Sadiq Khan's London worse than New York" framing) it's too early to say whether things are getting much worse. Murders went up last year, down the one before. It looks like the 3 years where it was right down below 90 weren't the new normal.

But listening to people like you, who are closer to it than most of us, it does sound worrying.

[MsD]

I went to a research / creative session for the National Crime Agency last week, I had no real idea what they did, previously and I do recommend their website as a source of info.

The takeaway, for me, was that serious/organised crime IS a big problem, but not one that affects people directly on a day-to-day level. Most of us are very unlikely to be stabbed, but the financial crime filters down to us so that we end up paying higher insurance premiums and so forth. It needs to be tackled on ethical grounds when it involved human trafficking and the like (crimes against the vulnerable). The gang thing filters down from the top of the hierarchy and many of the young men involved in knife crime (and, for a tiny but devastating minority, acid throwing) are foot-soldiers in someone else's army, as are the small minority who get firearms. That's not the source of all knife crime, of course, but it does contribute to a macho peer-pressured culture where having a knife seems to be a rite of passage.

The purpose of the exercise was for them to get feedback on various campaigns they are trying, with a view to engaging the public and persuading them not to turn a blind eye to crimes which may seem like none of their business, to report suspected gang activitiy, money-laundering etc. I'm always up for a bit of fruitful curtain-twitching, so this is right up my street.

Anyway, some really interesting reading on their site.

http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Last week there was a little in the news about "county/ city lines " where young people, many not known to the police, are sent outside of London to deliver drugs and collect money. This is a huge issue that has received very little coverage. Check out the metropolitan police missing persons website, see how young the kids are in it, and from personal experience I can say that most of them are being used for this. It's frightening stuff.

Like in Cumbria, for example.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

And more specifically.......

[MsD]

I think Cressida Dick has a point about social media causing things to escalate, but it's the medium, not the message.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43603080

[Tactical Genius]

As someone who grew up very close to the location of the shooting this gun violence and apparent tit for tat is a damned shame. I suspect it was a setup and someone who was in the group that this girl was with alerted the killers as to her whereabouts.

Social media has a part to play but it is media as a whole that is primarily aimed at black youth that should be examined.
for those of you who have been to WHL and got off at Northumberland park train station, you would have walked past this road.

As you cross over the road and walk down park lane towards the station. it is the first road on the right just before the shops.

Also sad (but not surprising) is the lack of response from Spurs.

[Bored Of Education]

This is a great even-handed read on drugs in this country from many different perspectives - police, dealers, addicts, recreational users, counsellors. It goes into a good bit of history about county lines. Scary for those of provincial types.

[Lang Spoon]

If the murder rate is as heavily linked with organized crime then I don’t think the approaches that cut knife crime (zero murders from stabbing last year, murder rate in general halved) in Glasgow over the last 7 years will be very applicable to London. Most of the young lads stabbing each other would be in gangs in Glasgow (and many would later drift into proper organized crime) but they were just defending their bit of territory/attacking the next scheme without economic exploitation and shady older lads making a profit from it/ordering killings.

[Lang Spoon]

Also Glasgow has very different dynamics eg with Minority communities and the polis (most of the kids killed or killing were white, it’s only in the very recent past that Glasgow BME population got to 14% from previously just a few areas of the city having a fair amount of folk of South Asian descent). The horrible racism of the Met and the rightful suspicion in which it is held especially by minorities is going to be a big stumbling block. Not saying Police Scotland isn’t full of scumbags either, stop and search is disproportionately used on young Black or Asian weegies, despite them being far less likely to be carrying anything.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Map here.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...n-ever-says-mp

Quite a lot of variation between areas. Haringey and Hackney the worst- other previous hotspots (Lambeth, Newham) less appalling than I expected. This is of course talking only in terms of murders.

[Antepli Ejderha]

There have been more in Enfield than the map shows.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Specifically fatal attacks?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is that one the map shows being just in Barnet actually in Enfield?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Last week there was a little in the news about "county/ city lines " where young people, many not known to the police, are sent outside of London to deliver drugs and collect money. This is a huge issue that has received very little coverage. Check out the metropolitan police missing persons website, see how young the kids are in it, and from personal experience I can say that most of them are being used for this. It's frightening stuff.

It is slowly starting to gather publicity and interest it seems. The Sunday Times mag published a three-page feature on County/City Lines four months ago (just register on the Times site to get the article, it’s free, very informative, I knew nothing about it) and I've seen it mentioned a couple of times in the Independent I think it was. But yeah, raising awareness on this issue will take time, it may become a little more high profile now that middle-class families are impacted too, don't know.

The phenomenon has parallels with the cases of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, where authorities turned a blind eye to the serial abuse of vulnerable teenage girls. In county lines, gangs are well aware that the disappearance of “difficult” teenagers can be a low priority for the police.

Now, as county lines become more widespread, middle-class children are also being targeted. Gangs call them “clean skins”. They know that a schoolgirl in a smart uniform is unlikely to be stopped by police as she boards a train to a rural county carrying a duffle bag stuffed with drugs.

County lines — a new form of modern-day slavery

Inner-city gangs are trafficking children to sell drugs in towns and villages across Britain — a practice known as “county lines”. Why are their victims being criminalised?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

(I can paste the ST article here if people are interested and can't be bothered to register on the Times site, just let me know).

[Paul S]

I work with statistics and on a year by year basis they do go up and they do go down, no matter how hard you try. It is also worth remembering that statistics cluster so hopefully this is just a cluster, albeit a very bad one.

[E10 Rifle]

I think the breathless "even worse than New York" is slightly misleading, as it seems to be based on a 1980s/90s pereception of what New York is like rather than what it is now. I mean this is only an anecdotal perception based on fairly regular visits, having first visited NY in 1991 when younger and finding it pretty edgy, but New York has probably changed even more than London in the past 30 years. A "London has worse murder rate than Baltimore" or somesuch might be more of an eye-catching headline.

Anyway, recent events in London still obviously worrying. There've been stabbings in streets parallel to ours in recent months.

[Ginger Yellow]

I think the breathless "even worse than New York" is slightly misleading, as it seems to be based on a 1980s/90s pereception of what New York is like rather than what it is now.

Yeah, that was my reaction when I saw the headline too. I honestly thought we were about the same now anyway.

[Tubby Isaacs]

New York had far more murders last year. The meme is based on 3 months, and only small difference.

[Antepli Ejderha]

New York had far more murders last year. The meme is based on 3 months, and only small difference.

It's actually based on just two as NY had more murders in January. At least that was the data on Newsnight yesterday.

[Antepli Ejderha]

I work with statistics and on a year by year basis they do go up and they do go down, no matter how hard you try. It is also worth remembering that statistics cluster so hopefully this is just a cluster, albeit a very bad one.

It doesn't feel like a cluster Paul, what we're hearing in schools is much worse than the media is reporting. The level of poverty is increasing, we've had a high number of families evicted or moving regularly due to increasing rents. It's also more difficult for kids to get FSM now so we're seeing lots of students arriving at school with the only food they've got coming from Poundland.

No wonder gangs and that kind of lifestyle is attractive, for many it's about belonging and then having some money and status.

There is no trust in any form of authority and the huge cuts have meant that the organisations that used to work with the kids to keep them off the streets have been greatly affected. Those youth workers who created trust have therefore declined. I can't see this getting much better or being just a blip.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's actually based on just two as NY had more murders in January. At least that was the data on Newsnight yesterday.

Ah thanks. I think there's not much difference even in those 2 months, is there?

[steveeeeeeeee]

I think many kids believe they can get away with violent crime nowadays, due to the reductions in police numbers and the amount of those remaining police assigned to anti-terrorism and other nebulous but high profile threats.

The community police officer at our school does a great job alongside a superb deputy head. In the past year I've had kids pulled out of my classroom, during a lesson, to be cautioned. The problem is, my secondary school is local authority run in one of the few london local authorities that has an inter-borough school alliance, meaning our community officer and approaches to dealing with crime are shared between cooperative schools. This is the only approach that's going to work, imo. Get real police liaising with schools as much as possible and use the school as a conduit for the local community to report incidences of youth crime. It's unofficially happening anyway, it just needs greater support

Hackney and Harringey have been eaten up by acadidation of schools, and thosr schools are not going to be interested in borough alliances unless there's some money and ofsted points in it for them.

But overall, if this country cared more for all its public services rather than just the nhs, we probably wouldn't be in this mess.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Very good point about academization hindering important cooperation.

I don't know how far work can be pooled by Sadiq Khan instead. To me, a lot more could be, but the powers of the assembly would need to be beefed up.