Posts Tagged ‘Knife crime’
Man knifed to death in Fulham: Jill Dando evoked
So how you report on the death of man in a fight in Fulham, south-west London? If you’re ITV News, you tell viewers that a 29-year-old man was stabbed to death “yards from where TV presenter Jill Dando was shot nearly 20 years ago”. Is that a line of enquiry?
And this on the BBC website:
The dead man was not shot. He was stabbed to death in a fight.
The dead man is named in the Sun as Nathaniel. We get that fact after the headline:
“Jill Dando murdered after blazing street row”. No. But who cares about journalism and facts when you can inject a celebrity element into a story of a young man losing his life?
Knife Crime UK: Government calls in RAF; Javid declares state of National Emergency; Cressida Dick and shoot to kill
Home Secretary Sajid Javid says the country is in a state of “national emergency” over knife crime, or what is now universally referred to as the “knife crime epidemic“. Last weekend, 17-year-old Jodie Chesney was stabbed to death in East London. Her assailant was unknown to her and reportedly said nothing before he struck. In Manchester, Yousef Ghaleb Makki, 17, was killed in a knife attacker. Horrendous. But is it a national emergency?
No. It’s war, says Gavin Williamson, the over-promoted defence secretary. He says the full might of the country’s armed forces is “stand ready” to intervene in the knife crime epidemic. How? He doesn’t get to that bit. But military rule is an option to replace parental power, absentee dads, reduced police numbers, gangs, drugs, skin tones, memes, drill music, Brexit, Instagram, race, poverty, wealth or whatever it is that drives someone to equip themselves with a blade and kill.
Williamson says military personnel “would always be ready to respond” to calls for help while the Ministry of Defence “always stands ready to help any government department… I know that the home secretary is looking very closely at how he can ensure that everything is done to tackle this problem at the moment.” London sold its water canon. But here comes Williamson with some real ones.
The Army on the streets? Williamson sounds nuts. But he’s not alone. Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner and advocate of a shoot-to-kill policy, says she’d be willing to call in troops to support her officers. That’s coppers for you. Sod all that therapy guff, community liaison officiating and listening, the police exist to tell not to hear.
Send for the guns, Cressida. What can go wrong? “I don’t exclude it, I really don’t,” Ms Dick said in an interview on LBC. “I think we all need to work together on this and if there are things that the military would offer for us then of course I would think about it, not to carry out policing functions but other supplementary functions.” (Don’y they do that already?)
What supplementary functions the RAF, Navy or Army could offer are not specified, but bombing Hackney remains an option.
Knife criem is a growing menace. Joanna Williams:
Knife attacks on teenagers across the country are reported to be up by 93 per cent in five years. Hospitals report that the number of children aged 16 and under admitted for assault by a knife or sharp object rose by 93 per cent, from 180 admissions in 2012/13 to 347 in 2017/18. Teenagers are not just victims of knife crime — they are perpetrators, too. Fatal knife attacks committed by those aged 18 or under are reported to have risen by 77 per cent between 2016 and 2018, from 26 to 46 deaths. Non-fatal knife attacks have also reportedly increased: the number of robberies by a teenager with a knife are said to have risen by over 50 per cent in the past two years.
What to do? You could start with trusting adults and stop presenting children as fragile victims in need of cosseting and counselling.
Knife Crime: stop and search wanted; austerity blamed; a Government licence to carry a knife
The Times is alone in not leading with knife crime. For all other national newspapers the biggest story is of “warzones on our streets” (Express) and what the Government can and cannot do about teenagers being stabbed to death.
The Telegraph wants police to be given stop-and-search powers. Readers see a photo of school friends of stabbing victim Yousef Makki embracing. Yousef, a pupil at Manchester Grammar school, was stabbed to death in Gorse Bank Road, Hale Barns, near Altrincham, on Saturday. Two 17-year-old boys have been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Are more police the answer to the “knife crime epidemic’? The Guardian says it is. The paper says there is a link between stabbings and reduced police numbers brought about by austerity. “How many more, Mrs May?” asks the Mirror, blaming the Prime Minister for 27 murders.
But is that why 27 teenagers have been knifed to death this year, because there are not enough police to control them? Surely there’s something more at the root of the matter than control? May says there is “no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers”. So certain crimes police are powerless to stop? Focus less on knife crime, perhaps, and more on people not paying their TV licence, doing 34mph in a 30mph zone and saying nasty things online.
Maybe the State could issue licences for people to own a knife, making a nice little earner from the horror and hitting the perps where the Government likes to hit them hardest: in their pockets?
Nuts? One other proposal for knife control was floated:
A judge wants the points of kitchen knives to be rounded and blunted to reduce the number of young men dying from stab wounds in street attacks.
Judge Nic Madge said ordinary kitchen knives were causing a “soaring loss of life”, rather than more heavily regulated large-bladed weapons… Kitchens contain lethal knives which are potential murder weapons and only butchers and fishmongers need eight or 10 inch kitchen knives with points,” the judge said.
Knives for only those who need them? Look out for the looming fork crime epidemic.
Posted: 5th, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Tabloids | Comment
Knife Crime: Black Youths Turn To Sharpened Carrots
BLACK crime. Knives. Ban the knives. But the toughs are moving on.
Needs must. Carrots. Peeld into a sharp point. A video:
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Posted: 25th, February 2009 | In: Reviews | Comments (7)
How Barack Obama Will Save Bridgend, End Knife Crime And Sadness
IN it’s news review of the year, the Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead takes readers “from the election of Barack Obama to economic meltdown, from the Beijing Olympics to the Baby P trial”. She “recalls the year’s best and worst times”.
But rather than being a time to reflect and make sense of things, Aitkenhead ends with a spot of mawkish media sensation, a spot of Mourn Porn:
Perhaps the saddest place of all in Britain was Bridgend, where another young suicide in August brought the total to 23 since 2007. The mystery of why so many youngsters did want to die was one no one could answer.
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Posted: 29th, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Long Knives Needed: No. 10 Spinning Death On Knife Crime
KNIFE Crime update: spinning death
Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, says officials pleaded with No 10 not to release “unchecked” and “selective” numbers.
Yesterday, Number 10 and the Home Office said there had been a sharp fall in the number of teenagers caught carrying knives in England and hospital admissions due to knife wounds in areas targeted by police.
As Anorak notes, it’s cold out there. Knife crime might be seasonal. Brrrr. Best wait until March when the ‘Tackling Knives Action Programme’ ends to see what’s what. Don’t just publish one part of the numbers. Publish them all.
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Posted: 12th, December 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
Knife Crime And Media Scare Stories: 1981 Revisited
“FOR David,” says the Sun’s editorial on David Idowu who was knifed to death earlier this year.
It’s a tragic water of life. But that’s enough about David, because the Sun is soon using his death to lead into a piece on the wider malaise of “Broken Britain”.
Crime figures reveal a small dip in knife crime “largely due to increased stop-and search action”. Brrr! It’s cold out there. Anyone want to fight now or wait until the summer when we get to stay out late?
The solution:
“…increasing stop and search operation.”
Cast your minds back to 1981 when the ‘Sus’ law meant anybody could be stopped and searched if officers merely suspected they might be planning to carry out a crime. In early April that year, Operation Swamp Sussed more than 1,000 people in six days.
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Posted: 12th, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment (1)
Mr Sick Joker: Children Stick Knife-Sharp Pins In Babies
THE Sun says HMV is glorifying knife crime – by selling Batman badges featuring the “deadly weapons”.
For £2.99, children, adults can buy a badge of The Joker “framed by a circle of 12 blades”.
“Yet the only warning on the packs said that the pin on the back could hurt babies.”
While Anorak puts that warning to the test, showing a picture of knives to babies and then testing their sensitivity to pain, shopper Nadia Cooke is in a branch of HMV with her 11-year-old sister and 15-year-old brother.
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