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Five fatal stabbings every week despite Labour’s knife-crime ‘crackdown’

December 29, 2008
From The Times
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

Fatal stabbings have reached a record level in England and Wales this year, with five people a week being killed with a knife or sharp instrument, according to figures published today.

The surge in fatalities comes despite a drive by the Government and police to reduce attacks involving knives, particularly in large urban areas.

In London alone the number of knife fatalities this year has jumped to 86 - a rise of one quarter on the figure for 2007.

Today’s figures from all except one of the police forces in England and Wales show that fatal stabbings have risen by almost a third since Labour came to power.

James Brokenshire, a Conservative home affairs spokesman who received the figures under freedom of information laws, said: “Knife crime is a scourge which claims too many lives and ruins countless others.

“Yet under Labour it has soared. The Government’s only response is short-term, ad hoc police operations, the results of which they spin and manipulate anyway to try to get a good story.”

He added: “Combating knife crime requires concerted action in the long and short term, not just spin. As well as deploying our police on to the streets as the norm we would introduce an automatic presumption of jail for knife possession. This may be harsh but it is absolutely necessary.”

Overall there have been 277 fatal stabbings in England and Wales so far this year - equivalent to five a week - and an increase of 19 on the total figure for last year. When Labour came to power, fatal stabbings were running at an average rate of 3.8 a week.

Over the past year there have been increases in the number of stabbings in London, Northumbria, West Yorkshire and Lancashire. In Northumbria and West Yorkshire fatal stabbings rose by a half to 15 and in Lancashire they more than trebled to 13.

In spite of the increases, as a proportion of all homicides, deaths caused by a knife or other sharp instrument have remained broadly stable for the past 30 years. Thirty-three per cent of homicides in 1977 were a result of stabbing compared with 35 per cent this year. The proportion peaked at 39 per cent in 1986.

Historically knife crime has been concentrated in certain parts of Britain. A study published earlier this year based on death certificates in the 24 years to 2004 showed Glasgow along with central Manchester and Vauxhall, Southwark, Bermondsey and Streatham in South London as the worst affected parts of the country.

In these areas people were at least four times more likely than the national average to be stabbed to death.

As part of attempts to tackle knife crime, police are focusing on ten areas in England and Wales where the problem is greatest. They are London, Essex, Lancashire, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire, South Wales and Thames Valley.

The action programme involves funding of £4.5 million to provide activities for young people, more stop-and-search operations, and the increased use of airport-style security arches and hand-held scanners that police can deploy in hotspots including railway stations. The maximum penalty for possessing a knife has doubled from two to four years in prison, and there is a presumption that anyone caught with a knife will face prosecution in the courts rather than a caution from police.

Next month offenders convicted of possessing a knife who are given a noncustodial sentence face being ordered to carry out more intensive work in the community.

Under the scheme an unemployed offender who is ordered by a court to carry out community punishments such as renovating community centres, cleaning graffiti or clearing wasteland, will have to complete at least 18 hours in any one week. The maximum amount of work they can do in a day is set at six hours.

Criminals will be expected to wear high-visibility orange jackets bearing the words “community payback” when they are doing their work.

David Hanson, the Prisons Minister, says today: “They will now have to do at least 18 hours of work a week, and potentially be subject to a curfew that keeps them off the streets in the evening, and a probation appointment during the week on top of these hours.

“This means a significant loss of liberty and free time for all those unemployed knife offenders across the whole of England and Wales.”

The Ministry of Justice said that in June 318 offenders in England and Wales were given community punishments for possessing an offensive weapon. It was unable to give the figure for the whole year.

Among the victims

— Rob Knox, 18, actor, stabbed to death outside Metro bar in Sidcup, Kent, in May. Man charged with murder

— Arsema Dawit, 15, Eritrean schoolgirl, died from multiple stab wounds at a block of flats near Waterloo station in South London in June. Man charged with murder

— Shaquille Smith, 14, stabbed in the stomach while sitting on a bench near his home in Hackney, East London, in June. He and his sister were allegedly involved in an argument with a group of youths. Six teenagers charged with murder

— Muhammad Raja Shafiq, 50, stabbed to death in Burnley in March while trying to protect his teenage son from a gang of young men. Bilal Bhatti, 21, a student, given life sentence in September

— Paul Gilbert, a 22-year-old father, was chased through Newcastle upon Tyne while on a night out and stabbed. His attackers, twins Philip and Mark Craggs, were sentenced for murder and affray respectively

July 12, 2008
From The Times
Adam Fresco, Crime Correspondent, and Philip Webster

New measures to tackle youth and knife crime will be announced next week after five people were stabbed to death within a day.

Four men were killed in London within 16 hours of each other and another died in West Bromwich. A sixth man is fighting for his life.

Downing Street suddenly released a statement from the Prime Minister promising action after he had spoken to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, about yet another bloody day in the capital.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is expected to confirm plans for new parenting programmes in areas with the most problems, fresh powers for the police to control gangs and shock warnings to youngsters about the dangers of knives.

A senior officer is likely to be put in charge of fighting knife crime. There will also be measures to take children home if they are on the streets at night and early intervention where they are at risk of drifting into crime. Ministers will not match Conservative proposals for all youngsters caught carrying knives to face imprisonment, which they say are impractical and would swiftly fill prisons.

One of those killed in London was aged 19, the 20th teenager to die violently in the capital this year. Another was attacked in front of his girlfriend by a hooded man in a Scream-style mask.

Elsewhere, a 20-year-old man was stabbed to death on Thursday night in West Bromwich. Last night in Bolton, Greater Manchester, a 19-year-old man was in a serious condition after being stabbed outside a video store. In Sheffield a young man was shot dead in a suspected gang-related attack.

The Metropolitan Police said last week that combating the growing number of stabbings was now their number one priority. Sir Ian said that his force was doing everything to solve the latest cases. Nine people, including three women, have been arrested over the five attacks in London.

The first victim, Gennar Jaronis, 41, from Latvia, was found dead early on Thursday morning at the rear of a disused pub in Tottenham, North London, that has been used as a squat.

The second man was killed at about 2.30pm after a fight in Edmonton, North London. Witnesses said that police tried to revive the 19-year-old found with stab wounds to his neck and head outside a suspected drug den. Three hours later Adnan Patel, 20, was stabbed to death in Leyton, East London, during a fight with a group of men. A witness said: “I looked out of my window and saw six Indian adult men fighting. They were armed with a golf club, an aluminium baseball bat, a wooden club and eventually I found out a kitchen knife.”

Yosufu Morrow, 20, was stabbed to death at 8.30pm in Walthamstow by a masked knifeman. He was visiting his girlfriend in a block of flats and was attacked in the stairwell. It is believed that the murderer was waiting for him. Detectives want to speak to a man in his late teens or early twenties seen running from the scene. He was wearing a hooded top and a white full-face mask from the movie Scream.

A fifth Londoner was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries after being found early yesterday in Willesden.

    Action pledged on knife crime after five killed in a day, Ts, 12.7.2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4318934.ece

14,000 knife victims a year

Sunday, 6 July 2008
The Independent on Sunday
By Jonathan Owen


Knife violence in Britain is far worse than official statistics suggest, with almost 14,000 people taken to hospital for injuries caused by knives and other sharp weapons last year.

According to the latest Department of Health statistics, an average of 38 victims of knife wounds are admitted to accident and emergency departments across the country every day.

An analysis of hospital admissions data for England and Wales by the IoS revealed that assaults and injuries from knives and sharp implements, together with sword and dagger injuries, resulted in 12,340 people being admitted last year – 446 of whom were no older than 14. This is an increase of 19 per cent on the 10,372 admissions five years ago. The latest figures from Northern Ireland and Scotland bring the total number of victims in Britain to 13,795 each year.

Dr Tunji Lasoye, A&E consultant at King's College Hospital, London said: "In a nutshell the numbers of stab victims coming into A&E have gone up. It used to be that we would see isolated cases at weekends, but now it is nearly every day of the week. And the age of the victims has gone down. We used to see people in their early 20s; now they are in their mid-teens. And 10 per cent of the victims we see now are girls, which wasn't the case four or five years ago."

The latest statistics from hospitals in England alone highlight an 88 per cent jump in the number of children suffering stab wounds – from 95 in 2002-03 to 179 in 2006-07. And among 16- to 18-year-olds, there has been a 75 per cent rise from 429 to 752.

New figures provided to the IoS under the Freedom of Information Act highlight how the number of people being prosecuted by magistrates for possessing knives has rocketed up from the 4,489 in 1997, the year Labour came to power. By 2006, that figure had jumped to 7,699.

Most were not jailed, with just 14 per cent ending up in prison for little more than three months on average. Suspended sentences leapt from nine in 1997 to 552 in 2006.

The revelations undermine claims by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, last week that knife crime "is not more serious than it has been previously".

Government assurances are based on results from the British Crime Survey, which has recorded "knife-enabled crime" as remaining stable at between 5-8 per cent of all violent crimes in the past decade.

But a report by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College appears to confirm the IoS findings, noting that knife crime "suffers from a lack of research on the nature, extent, cause, motivation, frequency and possible growth of knife carrying".

London remains the centre of what is increasingly viewed as a nationwide epidemic. Fatal stabbings of teenagers in London total 14 since the start of the year. In total, 18 have been murdered, compared with 27 for the whole of last year.

The capital accounted for more than a third of all under-16s taken to hospital with stab wounds last year, and has seen numbers of teenagers needing treatment rise from 139 in 2002-03 to 324 in 2006-07.

Hundreds of people were due to attend a rally held early this morning in Islington, north London, where one of the most recent victims, 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, was stabbed to death last Sunday. Yesterday it emerged that the youngster had written a letter to Gordon Brown as part of his schoolwork, warning that knife violence was becoming "part of our culture".

Detectives continue their investigation into the knife murder of 16-year-old Shakilus Townsend in south London last Thursday.

In response to growing public concern about knife crime, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) will issue new guidance tomorrow, calling on all forces and crown prosecutors to charge anyone over 16 caught in illegal possession of a knife. This will extend to under-16s already "known" to the police.

Acpo wants hospitals to notify police of all patients with stab wounds, in the same way that they do with gunshot victims. The police now want to use hospital records to identify knife-crime hotspots.

Campaigners calling for tough action were not impressed by the Met's announcement on Friday that just 75 officers – a fraction of its 30,000 strength – will run a new taskforce against knife crime across London's 32 boroughs.

Lynn Costello, co-founder of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said: "We have to get tough. We've let our kids get away with murder for years and now they are literally getting away with murder – or think they can."

Additional reporting by Brian Brady and Andrew Johnson

    14,000 knife victims a year, IoS, 6.7.2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/14000-knife-victims-a-year-860857.html

Young 'Harry Potter' actor is killed in knife attack

Rob Knox, 18, is the 14th teenage victim this year of the capital's gang and knife culture,
as Met increases stop-and-search

Sunday, 25 May 2008
The Independent on Sunday
By Andrew Johnson


An 18-year-old actor became this year's 14th teenage victim of London's knife and gun street culture yesterday when he was stabbed in a brawl outside a bar in Sidcup, just two weeks after 16-year-old Jimmy Mizen was knifed to death outside a bakery in nearby Lee.

Four other young men were treated for stab wounds after a fight broke out in Sidcup shortly after midnight. A 16-year-old was stabbed in the chest; a 21-year-old is in hospital after being stabbed in the neck; and another youth was treated for a hand wound. Police said a 21-year-old man had been arrested.

The man who died was named yesterday as Rob Knox. He is understood to have had a minor role in the next Harry Potter film. A statement from Warner Bros released yesterday said: "We are all shocked and saddened by this news ... our sympathies are with his family."

An internal Scotland Yard report obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveals that, while violent crime is generally falling in London, the murder rate for victims aged 20 and under "has more than doubled in the past three years". It adds: "The 11- to 20-year-old age group has also nearly doubled in gang [and] public order type violence."

As if to underline the point, a boy of 17 was fighting for his life last night after being shot in Archway, north London, in an incident being investigated by Scotland Yard's Trident squad.

On Thursday, London's Metropolitan Police Authority will hear grim details of research into life on some of the city's streets for young people. The report highlights fear among teens who say they are scared to travel on public transport, to leave their own "endz" or postcode areas, and that dinner-money theft is so common it is hardly reported. Of children interviewed who said they had been victims of crime, just 47 per cent said they had reported it to police, indicating that actual crime could be twice as bad as official figures. It adds that despite this, young people are suspicious of stop-and-search powers, which the Met is stepping up to try to combat knife crime.

The sentiments were echoed by the Children's Commissioner for England yesterday. Sir Al Aynsley-Green said: "There is a balance here: on the one hand for young people to feel safer by police [presence], but on the other making sure new powers don't create further antagonism by increased stopping and searching."

Alf Hitchcock, Acting Assistant Commissioner of the Met, said the force was working on community initiatives and tougher policing to clamp down on knife culture. Measures include sending police to schools to talk to pupils, an anonymous texting service to report crime, to begin next month, and a nationwide "one strike and you're out" policy.

"If you are caught with a knife and there is an aggravating factor, such as you are in school, you will go to court," he said. "It's a long-term effort," he said, adding that no single measure would solve the problem, which involves social deprivation, parenting and criminality.

The toll

Teenagers killed in 2008 nationally:

Henry Bolombi, 17, 1 Jan 2008;

Bradley Whitfield, 16, 1 Jan;

Faridon Alizada, 18, 5 Jan;

Alex Holroyd, 19, 10 Jan;

Boduka Mudianga, 18, 21 Jan; Faud Buraleh, 19, 26 Jan;

Joe Dinsdale, 17, 11 Feb;

Sunday Essiet, 15, 19 Feb;

Tung Le, 17, 23 Feb;

Ofiyke Nmezu, 16, 29 Feb; Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim,

17, 10 Mar;

Michael Jones, 18, 13 Mar; Nicholas Clarke, 19, 14 Mar; Devoe Roach, 17, 27 Mar;

Amro Elbadawi, 14, 27 Mar; Robert Spence, 17, 2 May;

Lyle Tulloch, 15, 3 May;

Jimmy Mizen, 16, 10 May; Nathan Lyons, 17, 13 May;

Rob Knox, 18, 24 May.

    Young 'Harry Potter' actor is killed in knife attack, IoS, 25.5.2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/young-harry-potter-actor-is-killed-in-knife-attack-834024.html