With violent crime rising across the capital, overtaking New York for murders for the first time, it’s time to wake up and take action. At least 36 people have been fatally stabbed in London since the New Year. What is going on? What is causing this rise in deadly violence? I put it down partly to social media; but the devastating cuts to the Metropolitan Police are surely more decisive.
Ask any Conservative minister and you’ll be given the same old line: “social media is to blame for the rise in crime”. As of 30 April we have a different home secretary but you can bet the new one will be saying much the same thing. When a report laid the blame at the austerity measures sanctioned by the previous home secretary, Amber Rudd, she confessed to not even reading it; let’s hope Sajid Javid is not to short-sighted.
Families are losing loved ones: sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Families are having large parts of their lives stabbed away from them, and the time to take action is long overdue.
Social media are certainly an influence on gang violence, with gangs posting videos on YouTube and acting violently in order to have something new to post. Such videos feature gang members making threats to rival gangs. They include bragging about people being “gunned down”. Gangs are stoking each other into violence, and if we’re going to end this surge in brutality we need to get a grip on this. Social media giants such as YouTube and Facebook need to do more to remove these videos and prevent them from being shared.
But looming even larger are the huge cuts to police numbers since the Conservatives took office. Between March 2010 and March 2017, Home Office statistics reveal that the number of police officers fell from 143,734 to 123,142. Conversely, statistics released in November 2017 revealed a 20 per cent rise year-on-year in serious violent crime across England and Wales, in London especially.
When police numbers go down, crime statistics must go up – it stands to reason.
Acid attacks. Drive-by shootings. Fatal stabbings. It’s all taking place in London, and it’s happening more than we’ve seen before in recent history. Almost every morning you wake up and read of another death. To say that police cuts are not a significant factor in this growing problem, is an insult to those families who have lost loved ones to violence.
Community support officers – cut. Police officers – cut. Armed officers – cut. Everything is being cut and as a result more people are being cut open on the streets. I do not normally set much store by correlations, but here’s one that is too tangible to ignore.
We need to do more as a country to prevent this. We need to put more officers on the streets and we need to give police tougher powers to deal with violent crime – powers that will act as a true deterrent to offenders, as well as tackling the ease with which people can get hold of a weapons.
New police powers to confiscate acid and stop lethal knives being delivered by post, are a step in the right direction. But the government needs to go significantly further.
