Yet Another Vicious Killing On The Strets Of London, What Is The Answer?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269341/Pimlico-stabbing-Teenager-16-heard-screaming-life-killed-sword-wielding-gang.html

/// A 58-year-old local resident said there had been two murders in nearby Gloucester Street in recent years and a stabbing of a boy outside a row of shops in Lupus Street before Christmas. ///

/// 'The violence that has started to occur around here is something else, it is frightening for all the residents,' she said. ///

/// 'You used to be able to walk around at night but I am starting to be very wary, especially at night-time.' ///

Such murders are becoming continuous more endemic on our streets, what measures should be taken to protect the peace loving citizens of this country?

[jake-the-peg]

That's difficult em - it's not like guns - people can have perfectly legitimate reasons for having a knife so you can't just wave your hands and have a blanket rule like that or you won't find a carpenter or carpet fitter anywhere in the country.

Harsh sentences immediately appeal because people like to believe in the deterrant effect

Probably because deterance works for them

But deterance does not work - the US has an incredible murder rate even where the death penalty is in place

[emmie]

not in our local paper sp, that still lists those brought down by knife crime. I can't give you figures, but it isn't a small amount.

[emmie]

JTP, i don't know, apart from a chef, and they usually have all the tools at their cafe, restaurant, anyone who would need to carry a knife in public.
carpet fitters tools are not only stanley knives, and they are kept in tool boxes, same for carpenters, beside which you can kill someone with a penknife, it just has to be sharp, and hit the right spot.

[emmie]

harsh sentences are not a deterrent, however as we have seen it gets them off the streets, so may stop someone else being murdered that way.

[jake-the-peg]

My point is that blanket mandatory sentences do not act as a deterant and are difficult to frame.

We need to be much smarter in response that just that sort of knee jerk reaction

[Sqad]

Interesting....your perception of a more "Crime ridden society" depends upon one's age.

Also, the feeling of crime perception is markedly different from statistical analysis.

Now I left Med school in 1960 and between then and now the murder rate has doubled...........not quite endemic, but certainly..."disconcerting."

[Zacs-Master]

And what about the population sqad? You've got to give percentages not just figures.

[Sqad]

Zac....good point, if one assumes a linear connection between population and murder rates.

[Zeuhl]

/Now I left Med school in 1960 and between then and now the murder rate has doubled/

Sqad: You could have done even better with a few more Harold Shipmans

[Zacs-Master]

Assume.....

Makes an ASS out of U and ME.

;-)

[FredPuli43]

And,incidentally, aog, do you disagree with my verdict on stabbings in Pimlico? Or the attitude of some residents in 1969? Or that there were gangs or 'crime families' in the 20 odd years I lived there? Be careful; my ex wife defended a member of one for trying to kill, by beating him to death with a wooden seat from outside another pub, because the other man was drinking outside the pub. The pub was in the defendant's family's territory and the victim was of another. The pub was not a hundred yards from the school where Princess Diana taught,when single, a fact which I mention to give you a clue as to how posh and respectable most parts of Pimlico is and were; Dolphin Square itself was a top address, only diminished by my living there. As to the rest, you'd be arguing with someone who lived there twenty years.

I expect an answer containing "rose-tinted spectacles", however inappropriate, to be contrasted with your own answers, based as they are, supposedly, on no such perception.

[Sqad]

Zeuhl......LOL....if i had known that Harold Shipman was "in business" I could have given him a few names of my patients (NHS not Private you understand);-)

[Zeuhl]

LOL

The Shipman Convalescent Home for the NHS

The Dignitas Health Spa for the Private

[FredPuli43]

jake , the law forbids the carrying of all knives, except very small ones, unless the defendant can show that he needed it as a tool of his trade or as part of religious or customary dress (Sikhs carrying knives by reason of religion and Scots in traditional kilt etc with a small dagger in the sock are examples). Otherwise you'd have to show exceptional circumstances e.g that you were just bringing a kitchen knife home, having just bought it, to avoid conviction.

[Sqad]

Zeuhl...LOL

That's about it ;-)

[sp1814]

Just to give some perspective - if one person was knifed to death in London in 2011, and two were murdered in 2012, you could statistically say that knife murders had doubled, but taken as a percentage of all Londoners, it's still an insignificant number.

And by 'insignificant', I only mean mathematically, rather than emotionally. The family of any murdered teenager would not feel that their loss was in any way 'insignificant'.

[emmie]

watching the news last evening on the latest dead teen, the youth worker interviewed said that many of these gangs are not based locally, in pimlico, but are coming from many other parts of London, and as one resident put it drugs are the main problem. So perhaps not a new problem for Pimlico, but one that could get worse, some parts of south London, an area i know pretty well look like Ghetto's with massive housing estates not fit for a dog.

[sp1814]

em10

Well at least there's a little bit of good news on the horizon - plans are afoot to demolish the Aylesbury Estate.

At least that's a start.