More than a week has passed since the death of Peter Hagan, brutally stabbed at the ground floor of a tower block in Wandsworth.
It seems to me that knife-crime is a problem that will not go away any time soon, in a society rife with gang culture and relatively easy access to weapons. Local shootings and stabbings are a danger that many residents in London live their lives in fear of, and the question stands as to whether such risks are being dealt with efficiently.
Statistics seem to suggest that improvements to this crisis are being made, particularly with the recent ‘Operation Big Wing’ which took place yesterday as police officers arrested hundreds of people all over London who were thought to be in possession of firearms. Furthermore, knife crime in Wandsworth, where I live, thankfully reduced, in general, by -11.6% in 2011-2012. Statistics for knife enabled crime in London from 2009-2010 were very high at a total of 12 611 incidents, and have since fluctuated up and down.
Although conditions, according to some sources, have improved, knife crime is still a very real and dangerous threat to many residents in boroughs in the South of London, such as Wandsworth. Crime involving guns is also extremely high in London, and the MET Police estimate that 101 gun crimes occurred in Wandsworth in the 12 months leading up to January 2013.
The police and the government need to identify and tackle the root cause of these crimes, but these causes are, most probably, a variety of sources. The British National Party (BNP) cited that an article on Hackney gang violence ‘failed to mention race as a factor’ and argued that a major cause of such crimes are ‘notorious black gangs in the area’. Is it fair to blame these criminal offences on particular races, or is knife and gang crime the result of a diversely corrupted society?
As much as I, and many others, despise of the BNP and many of their racist policies, statistics may offer some support to their seemingly biased conclusion. Scotland Yard, in 2008, revealed statistics showing that 124 out of 225 youth knife offences were carried out by members of the black community, and that an overwhelming majority of victims were white. In addition, the London Riots were caused by the Police shooting Mark Duggan, a black man, who was wielding a weapon, and last month the supplier of this weapon, Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, also a black man, was jailed for 11 years.
However, what the BNP failed to recognise is that 60 of those knife related crimes were also caused by white offenders, and that other ethnic minorities were proven to be relatively innocent. Also, the majority of London’s residents are white and, therefore, we can expect that most victims of crimes must statistically be white people.
I consider it hardly fair or reasonable to attribute knife and gun crime in general to particular ethnic groups, but it is clear that deaths caused by crimes involving weaponry are a dangerous commonality in a city renowned for its ethnic diversity. Gang members need to be pinpointed and arrested, and the police need to organise many more operations such as ‘Big Wing’ in order to prevent the unnecessary harm of more individuals and their families.
Knife crime must be stopped so that my local borough, and all of the others in London, can become a safer place to grow up in, to work in and to live peacefully in.
