Shots Fired :(

What’s the hells going on?  Just this weekend:

London x 3

Hertfordshire

St Helens

Manchester

Oxford

I can’t remember hearing of so many fire arms incidents in a short space of time, one of those involving a 13 & 15yo – is this social media affect or is there a real rise in gun crime lately?

bit of both.  Its the latest moral panic to hit the media

is this social media affect

As in it’s causing beefs to escalate or we’re just hearing about it more?

Pls confirm.

Bit hot innit, folks getting all angry n stuff.

Hot sunny nice weather, being British we can’t be too happy for too long so the media likes to bring it down again.

People get shot all the time in this country, at least 1 per week for example in Leeds

Also is other violence acceptable?

Pouring petrol on the wrong person and setting them on fire.

Snapping someone’s legs in half with a wooden plank with rusty nails in it.

All things just as bad if not worse than shooting a gun, but gets very little media coverage

‘Keep ‘em scared, keep ‘em spending’.

Partly media hype.

Firearms offences dopped by 60% since 2004, but have begun to rise again over last 2 years. violent crime overall has increased 3fold over the last 2 years across uk cities.

Nearly a decade of austerity & police cuts being felt

IMO Kimbers has it, it is the consequences of austerity. Not just for the police but throughout social services etc.

I am amazed there here hasn’t been some serious social disorder, only a matter of time.

There has been an upsurge of Gang related violence in London of late and it’s spreading nationally. It’s fuelled partly by a new-ish system of Drug Dealing, rather than sticking to their local area they’re branching out nationally (Google County Lines) its very lucrative, but it involves recruiting teenagers and viciously controlling them if they try to leave.

And yes, it’s been made easier for them by the lack of funding for the Police.

Yep, it’s the weather.

A very good friend of mine is a criminal psychiatrist (a professor no less!) and the two things that set off people who are marginal are hot weather and Xmas (no kidding).

Not sure what more police on the ground would do for gang violence. There can never be enough bobby’s on the beat to always be in the right place at the right time to make an impact on violence on the streets. The trick with gang violence is to get to the kids before they become recruited into the gangs…and maybe doing something about the gang sub culture that is promulgated through music and YouTube etc. That starts with educating parents, getting into schools etc. Once they’re recruited into the gangs it too late and many times more difficult to sort out. The UK is not the only country in the UK or the world struggling with this issue. Chuck more police at it and you just create battle lines and an us and them war mentality and fails wherever it is tried. It requires a much more clever and sophisticated approach. The Police are part of the solution, but only a part.

Even when there were more bobby’s on the beat its made no impact. I remember decades ago that in some parts of Manchester the strategy was containment in specific areas rather than eliminating it, and that has been the case in Nottingham which has had a gun problem for the last 20 years as long as I’ve been living near it.

Definitely part of it is the media whipping up a storm and making things seem alot worse than it actually is. Every town and city has its no-go areas, they always have and it is no different today but the way the media whip things up people get the impression they’re living in a war zone. But in reality violent crime is on the decline, its just gun crime that is on the rise but it is only in very specific areas and receives an disproportionate amount of media coverage.

That starts with educating parents, getting into schools etc. Once they’re recruited into the gangs it too late and many times more difficult to sort out

Complety agree, it’s why Sure Start, despite being expensive, was worth it, sadly 1000s of sure start centres + libraries, youth centres, & other council services, closing + legal aid, probation, prisons etc  have been cut by austerity, ais the root imho, the cuts to police just making a bad situation worse.

Partly media hype.

Wouldnt be surprised if the media hype helped increase things as well. Acts as “inspiration” to some numbnuts and also might seem to normalise it for those groups.

The issue with less Police, is that it is not a case of just more Police presence on the streets, taking down large drug rings or gangs, requires intelligence gathering, there needs to be officers actually gathering intelligence and then having the bodies to go and act on that intelligence, being pro-active rather than be reactive and waiting for the street level dealer to be arrested or the next youth to be killed. You will never tackle large scale crime without the intelligence gathering.

Wouldnt be surprised if the media hype helped increase things as well. Acts as “inspiration” to some numbnuts and also might seem to normalise it for those groups.

If you’re talking about social media, you’re probably correct, but traditional media, nah, I’m not buying it. Nobody in their teens and buys a newspaper or watches BBC.

You will never tackle large scale crime without the intelligence gathering.

Rubbish! We just need more guns.

More guns solves everything – especially gun crime.

I blame the immigrants, muslims and social media.  Brexit will fix it*

*may not be serious.

Somebody was on the radio recently saying they thought Youtube was making it easy for gangs to provoke other gangs by posting rap videos and other crap.

I blame the aristocracy. You can’t go around claiming that its a noble way for true gentlemen to settle their disagreements, but then start complaining when the riff-raff start doing it too

The upsurge in popularity is probably due to all this hoo-ha about the royal wedding

Bit hot innit, folks getting all angry n stuff.

This. All the last wars were fought in dry hot places…..

When was the last time you heard of the Inuit going Bansai????

The issue with less Police, is that it is not a case of just more Police presence on the streets, taking down large drug rings or gangs, requires intelligence gathering

The problem with policing drugs gangs is that if you take out a gang from an area you just create a space for neighbouring gangs to move into. Then a violent war starts over the ‘new’ turf.

Heavy handed policing of drugs doesn’t fix the problem it just makes it more violent.

The book Good cop, bad war does a great job of persuading you that the war on drugs is utter rubbish.

Also the podcast Stop and Search by LEAP UK is particularly informative on this matter.

But back to the matter at hand. These things are probably always happening but one is bad enough that it gets picked up by the press, it gets clicks and they see there is an appetite for reading about it so they report all the other ones and try and whip up a moral panic to sell papers/get more advertising revenue.

“When was the last time you heard of the Inuit going Bansai????”

That’s because there’s no trees there, inuit!

Boom Tish :-)