Steven Mace
03-04-2002, 02:21 PM
Monday March 4 12:48 PM ET
Knives and Guns Too Much for Britain's Bobbies
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain once prided itself as the nation that gave world its first official police force -- putting ''bobbies on the beat'' to patrol the streets, keep order and help those in trouble.
Now police fight a daily battle with muggers, killers and thieves. It is a battle they are losing.
In a telling sign of how crime now rules, police have decided to scrap the traditional yellow placards once placed at the scene of a robbery or hit-and-run to appeal for witnesses.
Dotted all over the place, on street corners, at bus stops, in train stations, they were too obvious a sign of rising crime rates. They were scaring people.
And no wonder.
A huge rise in gangland shootings in the capital has prompted some London doctors to turn to Soweto, the crime-laden South African township, as a training ground for desperately-needed lessons in treating gunshot wounds.
Doctors at a hospital in Hackney, east London, say shootings in their inner city area have increased eightfold in the past two years, from one a month to two a week.
The national picture is similarly bleak. Figures for 2000-01 show guns were used in more than 7,350 crimes across Britain -- up 8 percent on the previous 12-month period.
But gun crime barely tells half the story.
HORROR MOVIE?
If Britain's crime story were made into a movie, its plot would stretch credibility to breaking point.
Some key scenes -- a foiled diamond raid on the Millennium Dome that would have been the biggest heist in history; a massive $6.5 million robbery from under the noses of security guards at Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports; the theft 24 hours later of 23,000 mobile phones from the same place.
The background -- vicious and sometimes racist murders carried out by children on children; rival shootings by so-called ``Yardie'' drug gangs; trafficking of human beings; violent ``carjackings'' in which drivers are forced at knife- or gun-point out of their vehicles.
All this in a land that produced Sir Robert Peel, the creator of the world's first police force in 1829, and which held dear the comforting image of the bobby bicycling through the streets, helping old ladies and gently scolding small children for throwing stones.
No longer. Figures from London's Scotland Yard police headquarters show that in the past year alone, street crime in the capital rose by 49 percent, making London streets far more dangerous than New York -- once considered the most crime-ridden city in the world.
Police data also show that in London there are more violent crimes -- defined as street robberies, assaults and murders -- per person than in Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit.
The opinion of Lee Jasper, a prominent race relations campaigner and an adviser to the mayor of London, Ken Livingston, is uncompromising.
``Britain's capital is awash with cocaine, guns and drugs money, a multimillion pound economy subverting morality and social responsibility, appealing to those who have been excluded from society,'' he wrote in a recent commentary.
The transatlantic comparison was brought into sharp focus this month when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites) visited Britain and witnessed Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) being lambasted by critics for an almost doubling of street crime.
Giuliani proclaimed a policy of ``zero-tolerance'' -- even of very minor crimes -- when he took office in New York in 1994. His strategy led to the city's largest drop in crime in 30 years.
The British government is keenly aware of the problem, and equally keenly aware of how much crime, or fear of crime, affects voter attitudes.
Blair famously promised when he was first elected to government in May 1997 to ``tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.''
But evidence of that is scant.
BROKEN PROMISES
The government promised to crack down on juvenile delinquency and anti-social behavior by arming local authorities with curfew orders for young troublemakers.
Not one has been issued since.
Blair's Home Secretary David Blunkett promised tougher sentences would be imposed on repeat offenders, and the government introduced an American-style ``three strikes and you're jailed'' policy for burglars.
But the nation's prisons are already overflowing and Blunkett admitted this week that he would rather see fewer people in jail, not more.
The government seeks to explain the dramatic rise in street muggings in Britain as a direct result of the proliferation of mobile phones -- there were 5,000 muggings involving mobile phones in 1999, while last year there were 25,000.
But many commentators insist policing, or the lack of it, is the root cause of the problem.
London is policed by 25,000 officers. New York, which has a similar population, has 42,000 officers.
After Giuliani's visit, Blunkett said he hoped to push London police numbers to New York levels, but recent recruitment rates suggest would take more than a decade to do so.
The national picture is not much better.
After years of promising to get more police back on the beat, protecting the streets and deterring criminals, Blair's government has only now managed to get police numbers back up to the levels of five years ago.
And as one of Giuliani's New York police officers told British columnist Simon Jenkins, there's another key difference.
``In London, 10 cops sit in an office for every one on the street. In New York one cop sits in an office for every 10 on the street -- and those on the street tolerate nothing, not even loud noise or peeing against the wall.''
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020304/lf/crime_britain_dc_1.html
Steve Mace
Knives and Guns Too Much for Britain's Bobbies
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain once prided itself as the nation that gave world its first official police force -- putting ''bobbies on the beat'' to patrol the streets, keep order and help those in trouble.
Now police fight a daily battle with muggers, killers and thieves. It is a battle they are losing.
In a telling sign of how crime now rules, police have decided to scrap the traditional yellow placards once placed at the scene of a robbery or hit-and-run to appeal for witnesses.
Dotted all over the place, on street corners, at bus stops, in train stations, they were too obvious a sign of rising crime rates. They were scaring people.
And no wonder.
A huge rise in gangland shootings in the capital has prompted some London doctors to turn to Soweto, the crime-laden South African township, as a training ground for desperately-needed lessons in treating gunshot wounds.
Doctors at a hospital in Hackney, east London, say shootings in their inner city area have increased eightfold in the past two years, from one a month to two a week.
The national picture is similarly bleak. Figures for 2000-01 show guns were used in more than 7,350 crimes across Britain -- up 8 percent on the previous 12-month period.
But gun crime barely tells half the story.
HORROR MOVIE?
If Britain's crime story were made into a movie, its plot would stretch credibility to breaking point.
Some key scenes -- a foiled diamond raid on the Millennium Dome that would have been the biggest heist in history; a massive $6.5 million robbery from under the noses of security guards at Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports; the theft 24 hours later of 23,000 mobile phones from the same place.
The background -- vicious and sometimes racist murders carried out by children on children; rival shootings by so-called ``Yardie'' drug gangs; trafficking of human beings; violent ``carjackings'' in which drivers are forced at knife- or gun-point out of their vehicles.
All this in a land that produced Sir Robert Peel, the creator of the world's first police force in 1829, and which held dear the comforting image of the bobby bicycling through the streets, helping old ladies and gently scolding small children for throwing stones.
No longer. Figures from London's Scotland Yard police headquarters show that in the past year alone, street crime in the capital rose by 49 percent, making London streets far more dangerous than New York -- once considered the most crime-ridden city in the world.
Police data also show that in London there are more violent crimes -- defined as street robberies, assaults and murders -- per person than in Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit.
The opinion of Lee Jasper, a prominent race relations campaigner and an adviser to the mayor of London, Ken Livingston, is uncompromising.
``Britain's capital is awash with cocaine, guns and drugs money, a multimillion pound economy subverting morality and social responsibility, appealing to those who have been excluded from society,'' he wrote in a recent commentary.
The transatlantic comparison was brought into sharp focus this month when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites) visited Britain and witnessed Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) being lambasted by critics for an almost doubling of street crime.
Giuliani proclaimed a policy of ``zero-tolerance'' -- even of very minor crimes -- when he took office in New York in 1994. His strategy led to the city's largest drop in crime in 30 years.
The British government is keenly aware of the problem, and equally keenly aware of how much crime, or fear of crime, affects voter attitudes.
Blair famously promised when he was first elected to government in May 1997 to ``tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.''
But evidence of that is scant.
BROKEN PROMISES
The government promised to crack down on juvenile delinquency and anti-social behavior by arming local authorities with curfew orders for young troublemakers.
Not one has been issued since.
Blair's Home Secretary David Blunkett promised tougher sentences would be imposed on repeat offenders, and the government introduced an American-style ``three strikes and you're jailed'' policy for burglars.
But the nation's prisons are already overflowing and Blunkett admitted this week that he would rather see fewer people in jail, not more.
The government seeks to explain the dramatic rise in street muggings in Britain as a direct result of the proliferation of mobile phones -- there were 5,000 muggings involving mobile phones in 1999, while last year there were 25,000.
But many commentators insist policing, or the lack of it, is the root cause of the problem.
London is policed by 25,000 officers. New York, which has a similar population, has 42,000 officers.
After Giuliani's visit, Blunkett said he hoped to push London police numbers to New York levels, but recent recruitment rates suggest would take more than a decade to do so.
The national picture is not much better.
After years of promising to get more police back on the beat, protecting the streets and deterring criminals, Blair's government has only now managed to get police numbers back up to the levels of five years ago.
And as one of Giuliani's New York police officers told British columnist Simon Jenkins, there's another key difference.
``In London, 10 cops sit in an office for every one on the street. In New York one cop sits in an office for every 10 on the street -- and those on the street tolerate nothing, not even loud noise or peeing against the wall.''
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020304/lf/crime_britain_dc_1.html
Steve Mace