knife crime in dulwich and muggings

[eddeal1]

we in east dulwich must get together and put pressure on the local police to do something about the Knife crime and the Muggings that are taking place daily .the police seems to be sleeping god forbid if a police man is attacked they seem to find the person very quickly ???????? please get organised and lets do something .put pressure on local politicians too.what ever i can do i will.

[DulwichFox]

The problem is not with The Police. The problem is with the Law and The Courts and what sentence they can hand down.

The Police can charge someone with a knife related crime but it is the Courts that hand down any sentence.

Social groups defending the accused of having had a troubled childhood and of never being in trouble before do not help. Talking about kids carrying knives do so because they are frightened themselves.

Talking about young kids meeting up with hardened criminals if put away. Well that is the problem of the Prison System.

The Law has to be made clear. If you are caught carrying a Knife. You will be put away.

Currently there is NO deterrent. The types of Knives being carried are not for sharpening your pencil.

There are some serious weapons being carried around. Machettes .. Combat Knives.

We have to stop these knives being on sale. and close down Websites that sell them.

DulwichFox

[eddeal1]

DulwichFox i agree with you regarding the courts.....what i am saying is that police are not catching them...and the job of the police is to catch the Criminals .and a good police station knows what is going on in their area.

[JoeLeg]

While I agree with the general thrust of your post Foxy, and fully support harsher penalties for carrying/using knives, I feel it's overly simplistic to ignore the social/environmental issues. It's not enough to say that we will be hard on offenders - with the stick must come the carrot.

If young people are to be persuaded away from the path of violence as a method of resolving disagreements, and weapons as their tool, then he have to be shown that there is a better way to live their lives. Social programs that educate and mentor are vital, otherwise only the gangs voice is heard.

Not everyone will listen, but hopefully some will, and over time the knife culture can be eradicated. But simply threatening the full weight of the law isn't going to deter most of them, they already aren't afraid. We need to make them understand there's a better way. If they won't listen, well, they can't say they weren't warned and offered alternatives.

[dbboy]

Dulwich Fox - I agree with what you say here

"The Law has to be made clear. If you are caught carrying a Knife. You will be put away.

Currently there is NO deterrent. The types of Knives being carried are not for sharpening your pencil.

There are some serious weapons being carried around. Machettes .. Combat Knives.

We have to stop these knives being on sale. and close down Websites that sell them."

However what is additionally needed is the Sensible use of stop and search, not indiscriminate stop and search with much harsher sentences for possession and use of any offensive weapon.

[DulwichFox]

eddeal1 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> DulwichFox i agree with you regarding the

> courts.....what i am saying is that police are not

> catching them...and the job of the police is to

> catch the Criminals .and a good police station

> knows what is going on in their area.

One problem is that Police get accused of Racism if stopping and searching certain ethnic groups.

FFS when I was a young man, I never got stopped for being of an ethnic group. I got stopped and searched

all the time, not for knives but for Drugs because I had LONG HAIR.

Stop and Search is now a sensitive issue. All to do with Human Rights.

DulwichFox

[dbboy]

yep that's why I said sensible and not indiscriminate as thought it would not take long to get picked up for the mention of stop and search.

[JoeLeg]

"

FFS when I was a young man, I never got stopped for being of an ethnic group. I got stopped and searched

all the time, not for knives but for Drugs because I had LONG HAIR.

Stop and Search is now a sensitive issue. All to do with Human Rights."

Look, let's be realistic. The SUS laws of yesteryear were plainly abused in racial terms. I have no doubt of the veracity of your experience but far too many people stopped were stopped because they weren't white.

It's sensitive because it's still recent memory for large parts of the community. Quite what to do about that I don't know - it's hard to know how long current police officers should be held retrospectively accountable for the racist actions of officers from 30 years ago. Of course they shouldn't be at all, but those cops from that time did things that have cast a long shadow.

[rendelharris]

Like many of my ideas, it's probably a stupid one, but I've often wondered if totally random stop and search, weighted in terms of the racial profile of an area, could be a deterrent - i.e. if an area is 50% white 50% BME in makeup, the police could just stop and search a requisite number of each group at random as a deterrent. All manner of civil liberties issues involved I realise, but I wouldn't object to occasionally being stopped if it was done courteously. Even as I write it I realise it sounds a bit Big Brother though, but if it meant people thought twice about carrying weapons...

[uncleglen]

The method of policing from yesteryear was a deterrent to many. Growing up in the East End we knew that if you got caught doing something anti-social by parkies, police, neighbours, teachers you would get a 'thick ear' and you knew you deserved it so you behaved. Added to the 'thick ear', if your parents were told they would unreservedly back up the 'authority'.

Still- the past is another country.

[Herne Hill Guest]

I see plenty of helicopters hovering trying to pursue knife crime.

[rendelharris]

uncleglen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The method of policing from yesteryear was a

> deterrent to many. Growing up in the East End we

> knew that if you got caught doing something

> anti-social by parkies, police, neighbours,

> teachers you would get a 'thick ear' and you knew

> you deserved it so you behaved. Added to the

> 'thick ear', if your parents were told they would

> unreservedly back up the 'authority'.

> Still- the past is another country.

Where, as I've mentioned on another thread, crime - at least in terms of murder - was pretty much the same or actually worse than it is now.

[eddeal1]

all i am saying is you decide whos job is it to go after the criminals Mine Yours or the Police and if you have decided its the job of the police.....then lets get together and demand that they do their job. for me a criminal is a criminal.black white brown yellow or pink.that poor man in dulwich park he went to help and got stabbed.

[Siduhe]

Look, let's be realistic. The SUS laws of yesteryear were plainly abused in racial terms. I have no doubt of the veracity of your experience but far too many people stopped were stopped because they weren't white. It's sensitive because it's still recent memory for large parts of the community. Quite what to do about that I don't know - it's hard to know how long current police officers should be held retrospectively accountable for the racist actions of officers from 30 years ago. Of course they shouldn't be at all, but those cops from that time did things that have cast a long shadow.

This is a brilliant summary. Stop and search can be a very effective tool but there's a history there which is very difficult to understand if you haven't experienced it. My own experience was extremely limited - getting stopped on multiple occasions with an old boyfriend because the police didn't believe a mixed race man in his 20s could own a nice car unless he was a drug dealer - but the treatment he got was a total shock to me - nothing I had ever seen or experienced.

Cressida Dick has said she wants to do stop and search in a better way - and I like the way she talks about "policing with London's consent".

[SLad]

Yeah let's send more people to prison so they learn how to be better criminals and find it harder to enter or renter normal society because they'll find it nigh on impossible to get any kind of job. Great plan.

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

Precisely. Add that to the fact that prisons are hellish, hellishly expensive, and filled with drugs.

[dc]

> The problem is not with The Police. The problem is with the Law and The Courts and what sentence they can hand down.

Would anyone actually care to elucidate upon what sentences can be handed down? What are the sentencing guidelines to magistrates for the offence of the possession of a bladed article/offensive weapon for example? Any reference to the Povey judgement in the Court of Appeal that shifted the guidance towards the top end of the applicable range of sentencing options might be helpful too. You might be surprised.

I'm pretty sure that the issue is a rather more complicated than the law and the courts.

[EDPineapple]

Whilst I agree that there are problems with stop and search, and the prison system, the issue that the original post has raised is still valid. For months this forum has been littered with posts regarding muggings and assaults with smartphones, laptops and handbags stolen. The perpetrators often on bikes and mopeds. Sadly the incidents in dulwich park, and Peckham rye, this week saw the level of violence rise. These attacks made all the worse because they took place in the afternoon.

I would be interested to know how the police intend to deal with the problem and how we as a community can raise concerns around the level of violent crime in the area.

[uncleglen]

rh you may want to look at the first spreadsheet and revise your comments (I know you love having a go at me but the numbers speak for themselves)

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/historical-crime-data

[rendelharris]

uncleglen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> rh you may want to look at the first spreadsheet

> and revise your comments (I know you love having a

> go at me but the numbers speak for themselves)

> https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/historica

> l-crime-data

No - hats off for trying but if you look a little more carefully you'll see the column with which you think you've caught me out is for murder and manslaughter, the figures I quoted were for murder only. Numbers may speak for themselves, but it helps to know the language they're talking.

ETA By the way, just for interest, 2002 is a "blip" year because that was the year 172 murders attributed to Dr.Harold Shipman were added to the statistics.

[eddeal1]

is anyone interested in joining hands and doing something........as always no shortage of philosophers on EDF.

it is 100% the job of the police to make dulwich safe and go after the criminals.and i dont think they are doing their job.and too many knife crimes and muggings are happening. courts law and prison are next level.

[Pugwash]

In all fairness to the police, since their base has moved from Dulwich to Camberwell, they are not immediately noticeable in the area. However with the reduction in officers the police cannot be everywhere at once. We have 2 very good community officers (both female) who try to do their best. When PC Adrian Crust retired, his knowledge of the local community went with him. Having known Adrian for many years, initially meeting him as part of a mental health project, he was someone with very much an ear to the ground and was aware of the various 'dubious' elements in the community. Unless there is more investment in local police and numbers of community based officers are increased- many crimes will go unsolved.

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

I'm usually first in line to slag off the police, but it's stupid to blame a high rate of crime on them because a) crime rates depend on far more than policing style and b) they're completely swamped and underwater due to underfunding.

[peckham_ryu]

So far on this thread, I'm none the wiser about what it is the Police are supposedly not doing that OP thinks we should pressure them into doing. Is there some suggestion that they fail to follow up properly on some knife incidents, for example? I haven't heard about anything like that here, yet. I'll be very surprised if they don't already take knife crime incredibly seriously.

I do have a suggestion: pop up metal detector arches at stations. The police use these sometimes for certain carnivals; it's both scary and comical to see the sheer volume of blades dumped on the station platform when people realise they are about to set off the gate alarm.

[KidKruger]

what peckham_ryu said.

I think a community message to the police / decision makers that there appears to now be a 'vacuum' locally where we're simply not covered by police. Perhaps it's a consequence of the ED police station closing, allowing muggers to roam around (often on mopeds) helping themselves to whatever people are carrying and inflicting injury to anyone that resists, also burglars knowing they've got a head-start on the police.

The police are doing what they've been told to do with the resourc ethey have available.

Demonstrating that the area needs better protection is surely the only way that anything is going to improve but unfortunately it'll take time and will need to be championed IMO from within the community.