What’s up in London? Murder rate surpassed NY

I’ve spoken out against the NRA.

Official figures show 21,484 offences were recorded across England and Wales in 2018

The criminal justice system dealt with the highest number of knife and offensive weapon offences in nearly a decade last year, official figures have shown.

In 2018, 21,484 knife and offensive weapon offences were recorded, the most dealt with since 2009, when 25,103 offences were registered, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The figures come after the chancellor, Philip Hammond, handed an extra £100m to police forces in England and Wales after a spate of fatal stabbings led to a renewed focus on the response to knife crime and fresh debate over police resources.

The justice minister, Rory Stewart, said: “Knife crime destroys lives and shatters communities, and this government is doing everything in its power to tackle its devastating consequences.

“Sentences for those carrying knives are getting tougher – they are more likely to be sent straight to prison, and for longer – than at any time in the last decade.

“But we are doing more – yesterday the government committed a further £100m to tackle knife crime, while our serious violence strategy works to prevent young people picking up a knife in the first place.”

Total funding for forces in England and Wales fell by 19% in real terms from 2010-11 to 2018-19, according to the National Audit Office. Officer numbers have dropped by nearly 20,000 since 2010.

Elsewhere, the figures show offenders are now more likely to receive an immediate custodial sentence for a knife and offensive weapon offence.

In 2018, 37% of knife and offensive weapon offences ended in an immediate custodial sentence, compared with 20% in 2008.

The average length of the custodial sentences received also increased over the same period, from 5.3 months to 8.1 months.

For 72% of offenders it was their first knife or offensive weapon possession offence, a proportion that has been decreasing and is at its lowest level since the release of the statistics began in 2008, when it was 80%.



... ... ...

Places in England that have seen the biggest council spending cuts to youth services are likely to see the biggest increases in knife crime, a study says.

Research by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime showed the average council cut real-terms spending on youth services - such as youth clubs - by 40% between 2014/15 and 2017/18.

And the four worst-hit areas have seen some of the biggest knife crime rises.

APPG chair MP Sarah Jones said youth services cannot just be "nice to have".

She added: "We cannot hope to turn around the knife crime epidemic if we don't invest in our young people.

"Every time I speak to young people they say the same thing: they need more positive activities, safe spaces to spend time with friends and programmes to help them grow and develop."
... ... ...

Superintendent Darius Hemmatpour said that taking 20,000 police of the streets created a void

Funding cuts to police and public services that previously helped stop people, especially the young, from offending has helped fuel the surge in violent crime, a police chief has said.

Supt Darius Hemmatpour of Scotland Yard’s violent crime task force, said stabbings and other life-threatening attacks in London spiked after 2017, and suggested that austerity was a factor.

Speaking at the Police Superintendents’ Association annual conference he said: “Austerity has obviously impacted on individual families and households.

“Public sector services were cut. There comes a point that services previously available were no longer there.

“People on the edge of criminality may have previously had an intervention that may have diverted them away, but with the loss of those services, that intervention was not there.”

He added: “If you take 20,000 police officers off the streets of England and Wales, because of austerity, that creates a void.”

Hemmatpour’s comments echo statements from others in policing, linking violent crime to the effects of austerity. He said a massive focus and deployment of resources was now slowly reversing the trend for those aged under 25.

Boris Johnson has pledged to recruit 20,000 police officers over the next three years, the exact amount lost after funding cuts by previous Conservative governments since 2010. Senior ministers claimed at the time that crime would not rise, but the most serious offences did.

Hemmatpour said changes in drugs markets were also a factor, with phenomenon’s such as county lines leading to violence between competing drugs gangs.

He said knife victims were suffering more ferocious injuries, with surgeons reporting up to eight woulds inflicted in an attack: “Five years ago you would see two to three knife wounds, now there are seven to eight.”

He added that disputes were becoming more intense, fuelled by social media: “Before there might be a punch. What social media has done is antagonise people, you can really rile people.”

“I’m not sure killing someone is in the thought process, to say: ‘That was my endgame’. I just think it is done with such hatred and venom, the reality and the severity of those stab wounds lend themself to homicide.”

Weapons being used now include “Rambo-style knives”, tornado and zombie knives, Hemmatpour said.

Met chiefs have said they wanted to cut the level of stabbings, especially those suffered by those under 25 years of age. Hemmatpour said there were now 370 fewer victims under 25 because of a phalanx of measures but the level was still too high.

Stop and search was a vital tactic, he added, with the Met having increased its use to 25,000 a month and as well as expanding the use of section 60 powers which allow stops without reasonable suspicion.

n one day, Sunday, police started investigations into three deaths in London following a drive-by shooting in north-west London, the fatal stabbing of a mother also in north-west London, and the death of a man in south-east London who died after being hit by a bullet he had fired which ricocheted off a nearby car.

Privately, despite all the extra effort, police think the level of homicides in London this year is on course to be around the same as the 135 killings seen in 2018.

Weren't Guns banned for Citizen ownership by the English government?

They kill a lot more with guns.

You guys gave up your freedom for no reason.

Don't talk nonsense.

The homicide rate in America is through the roof, because of guns.

The only thing statistics are very clear about is you don't understand them.

You don't know what freedom is,

someone else does your thinking for you and it shows.

ITo answer your question, I'm not sure.

Freedom means not being told what to do by other countries.