London murder rate overtakes New York as stabbings surge

Knives??? So what are they going to do now? Ban knives? That might be a solution worth looking into.

this is much worse than it seems. new york has almost double the population of london.

What's frightening about these murders is that most of them have been committed by knives, not guns.

I'm curious to know how much of this recent surge could be attributed to their open immigration policy.

A surge of stabbings in London was blamed Monday for the city overtaking New York's monthly murder tally for the first time in modern history.

There is something drastically wrong with this sentence.

Violence in a big city ! Omagad !

Can people who blame multiculturalism or say multiculturalism has nothing to do with it please post some evidence for these claims?

Cheers.

London is the Pits and as far as traveling there , I'll pass Acid attacks are all the rage there as well . Multicultural ? who knows as the press doesn't give out the names of the perpetrators .Citizens have been disarmed & if someone wants you dead they'll use anything they can get their hands on .

just part and parcel...

Why the fixation with the NYC comparison?

Now HOW could this have happened?? The gun laws are so strict!

EVERYONE knows how and why this happened. However, we are not to talk about it.

Move along please. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, has much more important things to task his police force with;

Arresting people on social media for "mean tweets".

Meanwhile London crime rates have skyrocketed past NY in almost every conceivable category.

EVERYONE knows how and why this happened

I don’t. You seem to know who is carrying out these stabbings.

Evidence please.

I’m open to any answer. Facts are facts. There is a possibility I’ll be going back to live in London in the next few years. I’d like to know what’s going on.

Please present us with your evidence.

Thanks in advance.

As the mayor of London said after last year's terror attacks in London, it's all just part and parcel of living in a large cosmopolitan city these days, so just get used to it.

I'm curious to know how much of this recent surge could be attributed to their open immigration policy.

Open immigration policy - are you serious? Do you know what we had to go through to get my wife a visa? This is nothing to do with immigration fella - this is inner city gang related. The vast majority of offenders (and most victims) are Londoners. They just happen to be black Londoners.

I’m open to any answer. Facts are facts. There is a possibility I’ll be going back to live in London in the next few years. I’d like to know what’s going on.

Jim, if you're going back remember to adjust very quickly. No iphones or wallets out on the street and look out when walking home from work at night. As I said above, this is all gang-related.

I used to work for a law firm in London who were representing many of these offenders. Basically - on many estates in London young kids have to carry knives just for self defence. If the local gangs know you arent carrying a knife yourself then you are a sitting duck. Unfortunate, wrong, but fact.

@Tigers

Thanks, mate.

Good to get some insight from a Londoner who knows something about the city.

Refreshing.

I'd like to know how much of the increase is down to the scaling back of stop and search powers by the Met. Before Sadiq Khan took power he said it was racist and that 'I’d do everything in my power to cut stop and search'. We now appear to be seeing the results. Stop and search is down by over 70% from 2012 levels according to the Met.

 the mayor of London said after last year's terror attacks in London, it's all just part and parcel of living in a large cosmopolitan city these days, so just get used to it.

That is not what he said. This is what he actually said:

"Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job. We must never accept terrorists being successful, we must never accept that terrorists can destroy our life or destroy the way we lead our lives.”

Furthermore, I've seen no evidence that Muslims are behind the increase in knifings. Tiger's explanation makes perfect sense to me. At any rate, hopefully there will be no more anti-muslim\immigrant drivel here.

There was a good documentary on this about a year ago that went undercover on the estates. This teenager said his mother will kill him for carrying a knife but his mother only confirmed that her son needs it to protect himself from the gang on their estate. She said she would be more worried if he could not carry a knife.

Dont put all of this on Sadiq Khan. A lot of hidden racists are pinning this on him, but this started years ago. Previous governments, mainly conservatives, took police off the streets, closed police stations, and cut the police budget. Sadiq Khan is Labour but the conservative government sign-off his city budget.

The other issue is the very relaxed human rights laws which get these offenders light sentences and many times they walk free.

Jim - just make sure you switch back on quickly after living in a very safe country here in Japan.

NYC is multicultural, and the murder rate has been falling

Before Sadiq Khan took power he said it was racist and that 'I’d do everything in my power to cut stop and search'. 

I'd say he's right, and NYC used to do stop and search. Now they don't, so I seriously doubt that's the reason why.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City

NYC is multicultural, and the murder rate has been falling

Spot on. And Paris too.

The issue is that human rights laws are outbalancing fewer police on the streets. Basically the defence barristers have become more capable and law enforcement is overstretched.

I wonder why a big megacity like Tokyo can run without violent crime rampant and western cities cannot.

@TigersTokyoDome

Previous governments, mainly conservatives, took police off the streets, closed police stations, and cut the police budget.

You're absolutely right. And Theresa May was the home secretary who laid the groundwork for all of this. People seem to have forgotten about that and she's largely escaped criticism, for now at least.

The root cause of the problem is the streets are no longer safe as the police don't have the resources to patrol sufficiently, due to government cuts

That's what I have heard/read. Seems they are also massively understaffed outside big metropolitan areas.

I wonder why a big megacity like Tokyo can run without violent crime rampant and western cities cannot.

Good question.

Higher standards of living for most people.

No nonsense courts of law (unfortunately this sometimes means abuses of justice).

Education from school age.

Zero tolerance on drugs (this means no drug gang crime).

Not many council estates or housing projects where many cities hide the socially-poor.

I wonder why a big megacity like Tokyo can run without violent crime rampant and western cities cannot.

Cultural and social cohesion. The governments of the west would love people to demand more police and more laws (as they are). Yet police don't reduce overall crime. Though they are a great excuse to increase taxes and to increase oppression of normal citizens who violate increasingly petty laws.

A cohesive society of people who share similar moral values is how society is maintained in crowded cities. So 2 things:

1- People rapidly abandoning established social mores and...

2- Inviting disproportionate numbers of immigrants from places with contrary social values

Pretty much everything falls under those 2 categories, but particularly under category one. A culture that maintains firm social values will provide a better model for immigrants to adapt to.

I'm getting old.  Really.  Close to pension age.  So I can look back at my country of birth and see the changes.  I come from the south coast of England.  When I was about 12 a young man got stabbed and died in my city.  It was not just local news, it was national news.  As were all murders in the UK at that time.  The press  rushed to flock the Old Bailey to cover these rare crimes. 

So what changed things to the point that murders are now run of the mill events?  You can trace the change back to the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the policies she introduced that made many working class families poor and dependent on social welfare to survive.  Subsequent governments, whether Labour or Tory, continued these policies.   These deliberate policies were enacted to make the rich richer, and the poor to pay for it.  Not surprisingly a new generation was born where they only knew poverty and the only way to get ahead was to be stronger, and eventually more violent, then your peers.  This happened not just in my quaint south of England home, but across the country.  As a young person in the UK today you have limited access to education - and almost zero to higher education unless you can pay for it - so you are by default in a dog-eat-dog situation.  And this creates a hidden world where the poor and the deprived, and those with no real hope of breaking free from their circumstances, move towards other circumstances that give them some standing or being.  It used to be that "I've got a job as a apprentice glazier/electrician/builder".  But no more.  Now if you have a reputation as a reliable drug dealer or someone who has stabbed someone else - you have street cred.   And this is the case across the UK in every city. 

What is the answer?  It is complex and will take a couple of generations.  But it is in a change in how we think.  How we view society and where we want to be in 40 years.

I have much more to say but the wife wants to use this room.

2- Inviting disproportionate numbers of immigrants from places with contrary social values

No disrespect commanteer, your post was intelligently put - but this knife crime is not down to immigrants with contrary social values nor would that immediately threaten Tokyo either.

I am from London and I have lived on the fringes of the estates where young people are getting murdered. These are London gangs, black gangs, but they are Londoners. And it is mainly young black Londoners who are getting killed, not white middle class Brits.

There are plenty of Brasilian immigrants in Hamamatsu and African immigrants in Tokyo, but domestic Japanese problems in Sakai and Saitama far outweigh them.

@takeda.shingen.1991@gmail.com

I'd say he's right, and NYC used to do stop and search. Now they don't, so I seriously doubt that's the reason why.

Fair point, but I think the statistics on NYC are open to interpretation. If you completely end stop and search (as NYC did) it's not necessarily unexpected that recorded crime rates would go down. The problem is determining whether criminality itself is genuinely going down or whether it's now going undetected and unrecorded because police are no longer stopping people. This is nearly impossible with victimless crimes like knife, gun, or drug possession. I don't think anyone has a good answer.

Best post by far from SimondB. Very educational.

Ill say this, my summer holiday vacation to London and surrounding areas are over with.

@jimizo

"Can people who blame multiculturalism or say multiculturalism has nothing to do with it please post some evidence for these claims?"

-- "Young black and ethnic teenage boys 'disproportionately' affected as both victims and perpetrators in London." (AlJazeera, 25 Feb 2018)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/london-sees-rise-knife-crimes-180224152346205.html

JeffLee, black Londoner does not equate to ethnic or multiculturism. These gang members were born in London and so were most of their parents. They only speak English and listen to British music not American. It just so happens that their skin colour is black or brown.

The issue is not that their grandparents came from Jamaica or Africa. The issue is because there are not enough police and solicitors keep them out of jail.

Take away the British Jamaican generations and we still end up with working class inner city white gangs stabbing each other to death.

@TigersTokyoDome

Always good to see someone who knows what they're talking about.

Social inequality, sink estates, institutional racism (in the Met and other organisations), lack of funding in education, successive governments that fail to tackle these problems all factor into todays problems.

There is that decline of overall (moral and all) quality of an average British man, which is probably responsible for half the crime out there (as explained by "SimondB"), and then there is a more recent occurrence of migrants who commit crimes not out of "necessity" but out of insanity and feeble mind. One can be fixed by restructurizing how the society works, finally battling the underworld and providing just some protection for the poor classes. The other can be ultimately fixed by either sending them as far as possible, or catching 'em all criminals, counting up bodies on the streets, and in time the generations that come after this one will be more and more assimilated in the society, less threatened by original inhumane doctrines of their homelands. Which will still have victims. So I am at least glad I am not the one fixing it.

@JeffLee

Thanks for the reply. Why it was thumbed down is beyond me.

A more accurate representation would be “New York’s murder rate has fallen, now similar to London’s.”

New York’s crime rate has dropped drastically over the past two decades, and this is the actual story.

@TigersTokyoDome

"....black Londoner does not equate to ethnic or multiculturism"

Aljazeera's article headline states "ethnic", so I'm not going to bother arguing that point with you.

So, under what policies did "black Londoners" or their families enter the UK? I recall in the Lewisham riots of 1976 -- the aftermatch I witnessed -- both sides called them "multicultural."

"....we still end up with working class inner city white gangs stabbing each other to death."

Sure. And here in Japan, the native chimpira punks stab each other from time to time. You point being...? Anyway, Tokyo remains a million times safer than "feel the vibrancy" London.

So I guess no one ever checked the murder rate in Chicago!

London murder rate overtakes New York as stabbings surge

The "shocked" reactions are amazing! Who would have thought that violent crimes and fatalities by knives can happen.

Just goes to show that when one type of weapon is restricted or banned people will find and use substitutes. Now it's knives. Shall we enact new laws to ban knives? Conduct background checks when people buy knives....even at the department stores?

When knives are banned, people with homicidal intent will turn to using pipe bombs.

I wonder why a big megacity like Tokyo can run without violent crime rampant and western cities cannot.

Different cultural attitude toward crime and violent behavior. The Japanese people, for the most part, respect authority and obeys law & order.

Not so In the western culture. The criminal and his behavior is considered a "hero" for their defiant violent actions and defiance to authority and law & order. You have organizations like the ACLU more interested in protecting criminal '"rights". The criminal is the "victim" because of his poor, disadvantaged background, sufferings from social injustice, authorities and oppressive environment. His actions and behavior are never at fault. The social media and Hollywood idolizes the anti-establishment/anti-authority defiant bahavior. The police in western society are basically powerless for fear of "police brutality" accusations.

I've heard many liberals, especially in California, attribute violence in the cities on police presence; If there are no police presence, there would be no violence in the cities.

Just goes to show that when one type of weapon is restricted or banned people will find and use substitutes.

Oh, don't worry. Criminals are getting guns in London with little problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/23/london-mayor-urged-to-tackle-gun-as-offences-rise

I think the point is that knives are not the problem. Many everyday items can be used as deadly weapons if knives are banned.

I think the point is that knives are not the problem. Many everyday items can be used as deadly weapons if knives are banned.

Aye, if people feel threatened enough, they'll resort to whatever is at hand.

My own personal experience was having to fend off drunks. What's the answer to that - ban alcohol?

I think not.

Some people are inherently angry, for whatever reason, and whatever their ethnicity may be.

There is a traditional anglo-saxon aversion to using a knife as a weapon. It has been eroded by the mass importing of people from cultures where stabbings and begeadings are not repugnant.

sorry to say London is reaping what it has sown.

All I know is this is sad. Crime will hurt tourism, the economy, everything. Hmmm, that's kind of a stupid sentence, but you get the idea. I'm just sorry for the I crease in crime no matter where it takes place. Humans can be violent creatures.

Basically - on many estates in London young kids have to carry knives just for self defence. [sic]

So more knives is the answer? Seriously? That seems crazy. Does London have a knife culture? Deadly knife culture?

What does this teach? That crazy people will use whatever tools are available to achieve their goals.

I've only been to London a few times. Can't say that I had any fear being there, but I wasn't stupid when on the streets and generally look poor.

So, under what policies did "black Londoners" or their families enter the UK? I recall in the Lewisham riots of 1976 -- the aftermatch I witnessed -- both sides called them "multicultural."

JeffLee, you are yet another poster trying to use the terms ethnic and multicultural as reasons for this shocking spate of stabbings. But if you're actually not from London and if you do not understand the real reasons (you do not) then don't try and tag these gang members with the immigration excuse.

Here again you try to pretend that you know all about the Lewisham riots and how you 'witnessed' the aftermath so now you can blame immigration for todays crimes. But didn't you know that the Lewisham riots were because of police intimidation and the deaths of Jamaican Brits by right wing racists? And that was 40 years ago - the children of your "multicultural" Lewisham are British now.

Jamaicans were invited to the UK in the Fifties because they fought for us in WWII and we needed blue collar workers to do the dirty jobs that the Brits were too lazy to do. These crimes today are 60 years down the line and the grandchildren of those Jamaicans are British now. Its 2018 and these teens aren't ethnic they're Londoners.

This has nothing to do with immigration and race, why some posters have introduced this issue says more about them than the story they are purporting to be commenting on.

Police budgets have been slashed to the bone by the Government, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/budget-2017-london-met-police-cuts-sadiq-khan-mayor-conservative-tory-amber-rudd-a8053816.html with more to come. At the same time the Crown Prosecution Service has been cut by 40%. Add to that cuts closing youth services and support systems and no one is surprised by the rise in crime.

@Luddite

Lucid as usual.

It’s quite shocking to read some very lengthy posts which fail to mention this.

Facts can be annoying things.

No FBI nor Scotland Yard to disclose that, it would be one sided pronouncement, Interpol (International Criminal Police) should find way to clear-up the linking (or not) these incidents. More organized power to them work fairly universal, as International Criminal Police Association.

Now it's knives. Shall we enact new laws to ban knives? Conduct background checks when people buy knives....even at the department stores?

ThIn the UK you cannot carry a knife with a blade longer than 3 inches or a locking blade without good reason. Been that way for years.

Knife carrying has risen recently because police stopped using stop and search as a method of managing crime, partly because it was seriously disaffecting the majority of law abiding black youth. This has meant that it is now more common to carry knives, and fights that would once have ended with bloody noses now end with dead children.

If this rise in knife crime been in the white community it would have been cracked down sooner. But because it is seem as a black problem, I think that the establishment is less bothered.

There isn't a mania among the general public to own knives as weapons, or a belief that it's a right. Nor do we have a knife (or other weapons) lobby that insists on the right of ordinary people to arm themselves. Nor do we tie ourselves up in wankery about knives not killing people; youth stabbings are seen as a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Well, let's hope the British government does something about it! Ban all knives! Yeah, people will find something to replace them and use it to kill people, but until then, get rid of them all.

The who's and why's don't really matter, it just proves the argument that if you ban one weapon, they'll find another to use. Nothing changes.

 Ban all knives! 

Why would you want to ban knives, Bass? They cause less than the guns nutters bow to.

Well, let's hope the British government does something about it! Ban all knives! Yeah, people will find something to replace them and use it to kill people, but until then, get rid of them all.

Given your posts on other topics, perhaps you think that they should all be allowed to carry guns instead.

Of course if people stopped carrying knives, the alternatives will be even less effective at killing. Also, in the UK it is an offence to carry an offensive weapon. If the gang are all carrying hammers without good reason they will also fall foul of the law.

 if you ban one weapon, they'll find another to use. Nothing changes.

Weapons, improvised or otherwise, may not be carried in the UK. What you need is sufficient police to ensure that they are not being carried.

My own personal experience was having to fend off drunks. What's the answer to that - ban alcohol? I think not.

Good call Toasted - your logic is impeccable. It is common knowledge that alcohol doesn’t kill people. People kill people.

Weapons, improvised or otherwise, may not be carried in the UK. What you need is sufficient police to ensure that they are not being carried.

So what you are saying is, banning a weapon won't actually help improve the situation and we just need to enforce the laws that already exist? Well isn't that interesting...

Of course if people stopped carrying knives, the alternatives will be even less effective at killing.

Considering that the entire point of this article is that the murder rate is actually higher than in a comparable US city, I think that your logic is extremely flawed. Less effective weapons apparently does not equal less effective usage.

Considering that the entire point of this article is that the murder rate is actually higher than in a comparable US city, I think that your logic is extremely flawed. 

Actually the murder rate is not higher in London than New York, it is just that in one particular month, for the first time, London has had more murders than New York.

And it is worth adding that London has had a particular spike in murders recently, as you would expect from time to time.

So overall, less effective weapons is correlated to a lower crime rate.

But nice try.

Actually the murder rate is not higher in London than New York, it is just that in one particular month, for the first time, London has had more murders than New York.

So... in March, the month that just ended... the murder rate is higher in London than New York.

Make all the excuses you want, it doesn't change the facts.

Actually the murder rate is not higher in London than New York, it is just that in one particular month

The comparison with New York seems strange and not particularly helpful. The article below gives some some other figures comparing crime in New York and London. Some more comparisons from within the UK would have been more useful - is rising knife crime or violent crime in general a London only problem or a UK wide problem?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-murder-rate-new-york-compare-worse-stabbings-knife-crime-teenagers-statistics-figures-a8286866.html

London is a violent city and it always has been.The East End is where poorer Londoners live and it has always seen higher levels of violence.

Put more immigrants into the mix and gangs are more easily formed.

And gangs run on ethnicity, fashion, post codes etc.

However, there is little chance of escape for the average young person.

The East End is where poorer Londoners live and it has always seen higher levels of violence.

And there speaks someone who has never lived in the East End and has no idea what East London is like now.

Stop and search saved lives.

Sadiq Khan has blood on his hands.

Luddite

London is a violent city and it always has been.The East End is where poorer Londoners live and it has always seen higher levels of violence

I didn't say this, I quoted this to criticise the person who did write it. I am from the East End, you are lecturing the wrong person.

So... in March, the month that just ended... the murder rate is higher in London than New York.

Make all the excuses you want, it doesn't change the facts.

I agree that in March 2018, and in March 2018 only, the murder rate in London was higher.

In February 2018 the murder rate in New York was higher.

In January 2018 the murder rate in New York was higher.

In the whole of 2017 the murder rate in New York was higher.

In whole of 2016 the murder rate in New York was higher.

Shall I continue? It is going to be a rather long list. I am not sure what conclusions you can draw from one month's data from literally hundreds showing different evidence.

let’s see how the numbers go in the coming months before you claim it was all just a fluke, shall we? You might be right, but you might be wrong. But even a single month outdoing a city like New York is pretty shocking either way.

True. Let's see at the end of 2018. But even then it will just be a comparison of two cities. I think that overall the murder rate in the USA is about three to four times higher than the UK.

I wonder what the Racial breakdown for Victims and Attackers is in London, and if there is any correlation to the same within NY ?

I wonder what the Racial breakdown for Victims and Attackers is in London, and if there is any correlation to the same within NY ?

If you are asking whether the recent spate of murders is largely black -on-black, then the answer is yes, and appears to be closely linked to the drugs trade.

As for incidents, crimes concerning East London vs West London

See:

https://maps.met.police.uk/search/?q=East+london

https://maps.met.police.uk/search/?q=West+london

See which is more dangerous?

It is not just black kids that fall prey to the gang culture where women are demeaned and dying on the street is glorified- all youngsters fall prey to it.

However, it is the poorer sections of society that commit these crimes and immigrants fall into that tier-that is a fact.

A lot of victims are first or second generation migrants and many of the perps are too.

That is a sad fact but true....

Forget the murder rate, you’ve got bigger problems. First charging a guy for a hate crime because of a dumb tasteless joke with his dog and now charging an old man with murder for stabbing the burglar in his kitchen who was trying to kill him. What the heck is going on there?

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/941205/London-news-Burglar-stabbed-Lewisham-Hither-Green-pensioner

Forget the murder rate, you’ve got bigger problems. First charging a guy for a hate crime because of a dumb tasteless joke with his dog 

If you think that a case involving a Nazi salute (it happened in Scotland so under a different legal system to England and Wales) is a bigger deal than murder then I would suggest that you really need to consider your priorities.

...is this a competition?

It is for those who have tied up their entire identity with their ideology.

@Luddite

I hope that you have your facts straight now?

Cheers!

If you think that a case involving a Nazi salute (it happened in Scotland so under a different legal system to England and Wales) is a bigger deal than murder then I would suggest that you really need to consider your priorities.

You're right, I forgot the dog thing took place in Scotland, my apologies. But I still believe that this abuse of the law is actually more frightening than the murder rate.

 and now charging an old man with murder for stabbing the burglar in his kitchen who was trying to kill him

I don't think he has been charged with murder (not yet anyway), but "arrested on suspicion of murder". I think that if someone stabs someone to death, the police are duty bound to investigate the circumstances to determine if a murder has taken place. That probably involves taking the person into custody, thus the "arrested" part. Let's wait and see what happens.

If you think that a case involving a Nazi salute (it happened in Scotland so under a different legal system to England and Wales) is a bigger deal than murder then I would suggest that you really need to consider your priorities.

tell that to the Scottish police force.

But I still believe that this abuse of the law is actually more frightening than the murder rate.

I agree that it was pretty disturbing.

and now charging an old man with murder for stabbing the burglar in his kitchen who was trying to kill him

I don't think so:

*The CPS says if you have acted in reasonable self-defence, as described above, and the intruder dies you will still have acted lawfully.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43639183

I don't think he has been charged with murder (not yet anyway), but "arrested on suspicion of murder". I think that if someone stabs someone to death, the police are duty bound to investigate the circumstances to determine if a murder has taken place. That probably involves taking the person into custody, thus the "arrested" part. Let's wait and see what happens.

This. The arrest in these circumstances rarely lead to charges.

This is great news for US gun makers. They are always saying that guns don't kill people. People kill people. Well, guns do make it really easy. I'm just glad we don't have guns in Japan. At least with a knife, I may have a chance to defend myself, but not with a gun of a random shooter from far away.

Stop and search saved lives.

Sadiq Khan has blood on his hands.

Stopped before Sadiq Khan became mayor.

There is a traditional anglo-saxon aversion to using a knife as a weapon.

You realize where the name Saxon comes from, don't you? It derives from the "Seax" knife used by them...

Let's wait and see what happens.

Follow up... the man has been released without charge.

Yup, no charges.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-43676359