It’s mixing the 2 things up there, the gang is about a lot more to people, the crime is not all to do with drugs – ie get rid of drugs problem still exists.
The turf war is for everything that is going on there – in years gone by organised crime in plenty of places wanted nothing to do with hard drugs and still were responsible for death and destruction.

Always been turf wars, always will be.

Gangs are a part of society’s structure. Call it Land Grab or Partition if you like..

Drugs, well that’s an income stream innit. Combine that with turf wars and you have effected an economic model of a cartel.. and yet those models are widely used in legitimate business.

The only distinction here is that a few middle class oiks have gotten involved and the WhailingDaily have just found another stick to put the fear of God into Mr&Mrs M&S to keep them in at night.

Stop and search is poor and creates division, gathering intelligence and using it for targetted strikes on those carrying out these crimes is what need to happen.

That all depends on how the intelligence is gathered, the NYPD set up mobile police “outposts” in lets say areas that ethnic minorities lived in, and lit the whole place up with floodlights. The residents felt they were living in a Police state. They also arrested anyone for very minor offences, as it was a means of gathering intelligence.

We need to address the symptoms, and thats not facebook. Its poverty, gross inequality, lack of opportunity and arcane ineffective drug laws (amongst many, many other things)

Yep, this, merely taking the finished product off the end of the crime production line and storing it in a warehouse(Prison) for a little bit doesn’t work. Better to go up to the start of the production line and it the stop button before production starts.

The tories simply don’t give a **** about the majority of people in this country, they have enough police dotted around them and their interests to keep them safe, the rest of you can be fobbed off with the comfortable lie that they will punish criminals harder and harder, while ignoring the uncomfortable truth that it doesn’t work and has never really worked for hundreds of years.

Have A look At This.

Is there any where that isn’t!

There’s no significant knife crime around here. There is, however, evidence of ‘county line’ activity across this part of the West Country, because access from London is dead easy via the M4.
FWIW, I carry a pocket knife, sometimes three, if you include the blade on my Gerber multitool, in fact I’ve carried a knife of some sort since I was at school, actually used to take one to school, I could sharpen pencils for tech drawing far better than the shonky machine the teacher had on his desk.

The pink jump suit idea would, as several people have pointed out, simply make them the “jeans round your arse” of this country.

yes, but it would be a more pleasant sight than a bunch of ‘road men’

Drugs fund their lifestyle but the gangs are about territory (postcodes), “beef” and all sorts of perceived slights where nobody can remember where it all started

Steaks is high!

I reckon a total ban of knives is the way forwards on this. Replace them all with teaspoons.

I still reckon something to do with building up their communities – sports facilities, music studios, etc – where they are basically given apprenticeships and learn the skills to do the building/budget planning/admin, etc, themselves.

Good parenting…..

binners, (and others) I agree lack of social mobility os deplorable…. but do you not think some crime is by nasty or dangerous people, and that sentences need to provide restorative justice for victims?

And how do these people become ‘nasty or dangerous’?

IMHO it’s because they’re excluded and shat on by society from day one, so if you spent your early formative life being excluded and discriminated against, while living in poverty and surrounded by wealth, what would you do?

I’d probably be doing what ‘they’ are doing. Doing whatever it takes to survive when most avenues are well and truly closed to you.

Until we have a government that actually gives a shit about those at the bottom, nothing will change and the government we have at the moment doesn’t give a Flying **** for anyone but the members of their own rich 5% cabal

Get used to this. This is the new ‘normal’. As long as there’s minimal crossover and ‘they’ (the underclass) keep it between themselves, the government will stay on course with their austerity agenda of dismantling the state, and if those at the bottom get knifed to death as a result of that, well.. who cares?

Less of them to have to deal with.

Innit?

nickc

Subscriber

The universally respected Scottish model started with massively increased amounts of stop and search

“I see lots of people saying we used stop and search, and yes we did initially. It was a key component, but when you start to use it excessively then it becomes a blunt instrument that alienates young people and entire communities.””

Head of the VRU, there. Their use of stop and search was extremely targeted and intelligence led, not a blunt instrument, not fishing trips. The results are pretty clear from the stats- frinstance, in London, even in the event that an action is taken after a stop justified by suspicion of carrying a weapon, less than 1 in 5 is actually knife related. That just didn’t happen here. It doesn’t happen in london with drugs, either, where it’s 3 out of 5.

What’s kind of grim, is that the stats are actually pretty good for stop-and-search of white people. In fact, white people account for about 60% of stop-and-search arrests in London, despite accounting for only about 15% of stops. And the search-to-arrest ratio in Glasgow at its peak, is actually very close to the search-to-arrest ration in London in 2018- as long as you only look at white people. Once you add in BAME backgrounds, suddenly the signal-to-noise goes to shit.

Draw your own conclusions but I’d say the likely cause of that, is that stops of white people are more likely to be done with good cause and good intel, which is why they lead to better outcomes.

It must be tiring repeating the same chip in the shoulder pseudo-marxist Tory blaming in every thread. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same people complaining about the tory cuts, would also complain if police numbers where drastically increased in high crime areas.

IMHO what is alarming people is that the old rules, be aware of your surroundings, and play it smart don’t seem to be working anymore, but then again I could be completely wrong.

@Northwind

Interesting info, I am personally not a fan of stop and search, the guidelines seem too broad, the concept seems authoritarian and it has the potential to go wrong very quick:
https://www.gov.uk/police-powers-to-stop-and-search-your-rights

By signal-to-noise ratio going to shit, do you mean that the stdev was too high or that there were no identifiable trends?

It must be tiring repeating the same chip in the shoulder pseudo-marxist Tory blaming in every thread.

So reducing police numbers by 20,000, and decimating all youth services and overseeing a huge increase in the number of kids growing up in poverty has had no impact on youth crime rates? You are Theresa May and I claim my Zombie Knife

IMHO what is alarming people is that the old rules, be aware of your surroundings, and play it smart don’t seem to be working anymore

Actually… you are Alan Partridge and I claim my ‘This Time’ mug. 😀

Where we would put all these people and what you would do to educate them is another question and no doubt would cost money.

Yes, a minor detail we can sort out later…
As pointed out above, if just locking more people up worked, the USA would be a nirvana of peaceful, well behaved citizens. Ditto Russia.

As people keep pointing out, Srathclyde VRU has actually produced some hard evidence about tackling knife crime. We can learn and build on that, or we can keep talking about pink jumpsuits and locking lots of people up, because it sounds tough.

They’re about to discuss knife crime on the Five Live phone in. Shall we have a guess how long it is before someone suggests bringing back national service? Then hanging? Then ‘locking them all up and throwing away the key’?

I’m going for 4 minutes in for all three

Interesting info, I am personally not a fan of stop and search, the guidelines seem too broad, the concept seems authoritarian and it has the potential to go wrong very quick:

The key to stop and search is to know what you are looking for and probably get the racists out of the process.

as for 5 live they will be the finest selection of people not at work….. I expect a full gammon house by 9:27

“As people keep pointing out, Strathclyde VRU has actually produced some hard evidence about tackling knife crime.”

Which included vast amounts of stop searches. Scotland doing ;per capita 4 times the searches of England. Of the Scottish searches Strathclyde Police with 43% of the population carried out 84% of the searches. So roughly 8x the level of searches in England. And don’t try and tell me that number of searches were intelligence led.

Sometimes this is forgotten when people talk of the VRU and the “Glasgow model.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25774462

The biggest step in reducing knife crime in Glasgow was shutting Victor Morris.

The only shop in the world where you could purchase a crossbow and a banjo in a single transaction.

The banjo is a very underestimated weapon

@binners

I guess the answer is no, it doesn’t get tiring.

I´m a spanish immigrant, so could you explain the Alan Partridge reference? Also, was I correct with that statement?

The banjo is a very underestimated weapon

I once tried to hit a cow in the arse with one.

Couldn’t.

I’ve had a similar problem with a barn door and a shovel

Baboonz – pointing out that all manner of Tory policies – reducing police numbers by 20,000, petty much shutting down all youth services, and being indifferent, at best, to a huge increase in child poverty – may well have been a factor in an increase in crime, isn’t really Marxist, is it?

as for 5 live they will be the finest selection of people not at work….. I expect a full gammon house by 9:27

🤣

However we want to cut society into segments, that set which will appear on 5L are a representation of a group who do actually think that way…

I didn’t know about the low down jeans thing being representative image of US Inmates …

The things you learn eh.

Baboonz – pointing out that all manner of Tory policies – reducing police numbers by 20,000, petty much shutting down all youth services, and being indifferent, at best, to a huge increase in child poverty – may well have been a factor in an increase in crime, isn’t really Marxist, is it?

Just a thought, but as we travel back in time to Dickensian days, maybe the wearing of sword will again become part of everyday dress.
The question posed in this article is whether a gentleman should wear a sword in the company of a lady, (or on the tube perhaps)?

‘On the other hand, most heros of novels from the earlier Georgian era would have considered themselves quite naked without their small swords. And considering the lawlessness of that time, the ladies in their company would have been quite comforted by the presence of said blade. In fact, most English gentlemen from the Middle Ages into the mid-eighteenth century wore a side arm, either a sword, a dagger, or both. A well-dressed buck out for a night on the town in Georgian London would have been a fool to wander the city streets unarmed’.

Which included vast amounts of stop searches.

I don’t think anyone has suggested they didn’t use stop and search, have they?
The point is that the VRU didn’t rely on one approach. They used everything that they thought would be useful and they joined it all up

@binners

You are jumping to a lot of conclusions, in order to satisfy your last point, of which if your conclusions are correct then your point is a good argument. That specific point as a whole wouldn´t be marxist no, however again I ask, are any of these Labour constituencies? If so should they be held responsible to any degree?

Also stop selecting small sections to give you an excuse to hit with a quick reply and please explain that Alan Partridge reference.

You are aware that it was a certain Mrs T May who, as home secretary, personally cut police numbers by 20,000?

And I would imagine that most of the worst effected areas, being poor and inner city, are sure to be Labour constituencies. But they’ve born the brunt of all the funding cuts, while leafy Tory shires have been barely touched. But I don’t see how you can hold labour responsible for things like the reduction in youth services when most of them have been looking at budget cuts of up to 40% since 2010. What are they supposed to do? We know that there is a magic money tree, but its only accessible to a few

Pointing out that enormous cuts to local council budgets and police forces will most likely have had an impact on crime rates isn’t exactly some mad, leftist dogma, is it?

At the end of the day, the Tory’s won’t do a single thing about this as it doesn’t effect the people or the areas they represent. The areas and people who are effected by this are the ones the Tory’s prove time after time that they couldn’t give a toss about

As satire, this is pretty accurate

Tories pledge to tackle knife crime by occasionally being a bit cross about it

Oh…. and the Partridge reference was that your statement was a tad Partridge-esque 😉

@binners

I already answered, that assuming you are correct, it’s not leftist dogma. Say they increase the police numbers sufficiently, targeting the high crime areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was then criticized for some politically correct reason.

As for who bares the brunt of the cuts, maybe there wasn’t much to cut from in those places?

The line managers(Labour) blaming everything on upper management (Tory) just seems like a far too comfortable position to sit in. It seems that the attitude provides no incentive to be as effective as possible.

Why on earth would anyone criticise raising police numbers in high crime areas on the grounds of political correctness? Thats just a completely bonkers statement!

The line managers(Labour) blaming everything on upper management (Tory) just seems like a far too comfortable position to sit in

There are plenty of examples of Tory Local councillors (who have endured far lower cuts) saying that the cuts have been far too draconian and need to be eased. I suppose they’re Marxists too, are they?

You just sound like Theresa May in her usual blame-storming exercise. She does something which will obviously have an impact (police numbers and crime rates) the ridiculously claim there’s no link (of course theres a bloody link) then look to blame everyone else instead. SQUIRREL!!

This morning it seems that even her own home secretary is acknowledging that the police need their funding increased. Even he doesn’t believe her ridiculous claims of no links.

The Maybot won’t do that, obviously. She won’t do anything, as she simply doesn’t care and is just assuming that no more middle class white kids will be getting knifed, so this will blow over as the press lose interest and stop covering it, and black kids on sink estates can carry on shanking each other

Nobeerinthefridge

Subscriber
I’m not convinced that it was anything other than us getting kinda lucky up here. The gang culture died away organically, thankfully.

I think a lot of what happened up here is it calmed down after people stopping letting their weans have the freedom we did in the 80/90s. I suspect there’s a correlation there. That and tearing down and rebuilding alot of the shitholes made as much of a difference as any police or political work. A combination of a lot of factors really, I’d suggest Glasgow isn’t as poor as it was 30 years ago either and there’s been a general upgrading in standard of living for people.

irc

Member

And don’t try and tell me that number of searches were intelligence led.

Why on earth not? I quoted the head of the VRU up the page stating that you have to avoid it being a blunt instrument, which is plainly what it’s become elsewhere. And like I say, you can see the difference between well targeted and poorly targeted stop and search easily from the outcomes.

And you can see that same intelligence led approach all the way through the VRU approach- they knew exactly who to target, who the teams were and where to find them, who to “invite” to the sheriff’s court and other educational events, where to put the levers. Nobody ever said anything as vacuous as “we search more black youths because they’re more available for searches”, which comes up over and over and is just an absolute admission of failure.

This isn’t ‘the answer’ but was an interesting take; I can’t remember where I saw it but it was a talking heads type discussion between an older black guy who runs a boxing gym for the kids in his south london neighbourhood, and a younger black reporter asking him about knife crime when times were ‘just as hard’ for the older guy when he was a kid in the 70’s

And he was a strong advocate of stop and search – but in his case he was getting stopped and searched by his parents when he went out of his front door and then again when he came back in.

I’m with Binners/the factory analogy, unless we deal with the production line, we just need bigger and bigger warehouses to store the stuff it makes in. But HOW we fix that, starts with parenting, and unfortunately many of the parents are now disfunctional too. It’s easy to say we need to press the stop button on the production line, but I’ll be damned where to find it.

At the end of the day, the Tory’s won’t do a single thing about this as it doesn’t effect the people or the areas they represent. The areas and people who are effected by this are the ones the Tory’s prove time after time that they couldn’t give a toss about

Exactly. Looking at it from a voting perspective why bother with areas that will never vote for you. The difficulty is that their usual supporters (i.e. Daily Mail) are kicking off about and not letting it go by quietly. However, still can’t see it affecting the New Forest Tory vote…

But HOW we fix that, starts with parenting, and unfortunately many of the parents are now disfunctional too. It’s easy to say we need to press the stop button on the production line, but I’ll be damned where to find it.

Deffo this, and the answer proposed to that is let the state take more parenting responsibility. Yet when the state has total responsibility – ie takes kids into care – the outcomes are often disastrous.

There just is no substitute for good parenting and you learn good parenting from your good parents. If you don’t have those…

There are plenty of examples of Tory Local councillors (who have endured far lower cuts) saying that the cuts have been far too draconian and need to be eased.

In my area they’ve been saying that. But they’ve had 5 years warning to raise local taxes year on year to completely make up the shortfall – and they didn’t.

To change peoples behaviour with regard to parenting its a long term, generational thing. Schemes like Sure Start addressed this and were really starting to deliver results

Guess what was the very fist thing the Tory’s axed when they were elected?

You can’t just react to things as they happen. You need to address the causes and acknowledge that there are no quick fixes. The guy who was responsible for the reduction in knife crime in Glasgow was on channel 4 news last night. He said that when they set out they knew that it would take a generation, and that they had to have come at it from multiple directions, through various agencies, addressing poverty, housing, education, youth unemployment, youth services, and mental health issues in deprived areas, as well as policing

In other words, all the things this government doesn’t give a shit about. Theresa May has said they’re having a summit about it next week. I’m sure they’ll all look serious and suitably concerned, make the right noises, then do absolutely **** all to address any of the root causes, hope it bows over and nobody else white and middle class gets caught up in it

But HOW we fix that, starts with parenting, and unfortunately many of the parents are now disfunctional too. It’s easy to say we need to press the stop button on the production line, but I’ll be damned where to find it.

Sure Start was shown to be effective, – support for families from immediately after birth, but was damn expensive, so many centres were cut at the start of austerity & those that remain have far less funding.

This is despite the fact that even though expensive, it had a net financial benefit to the country as well as benefiting the children & families themselves.

But that’s austerity for ya!

https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7257

All it takes ( and this is my opinion , founded on no facts but the way my own mind processes information ) is one guy in a flash car.
You are 14/15 , this guy is 21/22 . He may well be the brother or ‘cuz’ of a mate and he is running round in a Porsche.
All the info stream this group of yoofs is getting is the bad news train. No jobs, Brexit, crazy house prices, no future, unemployment, foreigners taking all of our jobs etc
Hang on , Mr Porsche is doing very well, he is one of us ,from the same estate. The fact he is the local go to dealer and has evaded prison thus far is irrelevant. So they see his ‘success’ as a nice easy way to make a living without GCSE’s / A levels etc
So they start selling , need a patch , need to defend that patch , need to gain a reputation as guy not to messed with or grassed to the polis about
Beats hanging around in the local community center playing table tennis on a knackered table, cash in your pocket to treat your crew to a couple of large Domino’s to gain loyalty
Live at home , get a few PAYG phones and a blade job jobbed.

Its alot more accessable than school, collage, Uni , Degree, flat, job , career , rsponsibility
People see success as material things , you do not clock the 10,000 Ford Mundanes driving past you, but the Porchce, Mclaren , R8 etc all instantly recognisable. Shame that the biggest success is probably a happy family with a roof over their heads and enough food to go round is not a recognised thing of merit anymore
IMO

Maybe people should stop blaming other people (government) and actually start by working out what they can do themselves.

We can all report anything we see, give the police more intel. If your a parent then do some parenting, spend some time with them.

Volunteer for some community or youth based work.

The trouble we have is we never look to ourselves enough anymore to make things better, we always think its someone else’s job.

perchypanther

The biggest step in reducing knife crime in Glasgow was shutting Victor Morris.

The only shop in the world where you could purchase a crossbow and a banjo in a single transaction.

You’re thinking a bit too small there, I bought a set of samurai swords and a BC Rich 7-string guitar in there one lunchtime.