Street crime soaring by 26 per cent

The Sunday Times - Grate Britain ^ | February 10, 2002 | David Leppard

[eyes_only]

STREET crime is "running out of control" with  the number of muggings rising by more than 26% over the past nine months, according to internal Home Office figures.

The increase, which has been accompanied by a sharp rise in the use of guns, has so alarmed Tony Blair that he has ordered one of his top Downing Street officials into the Home Office and Scotland Yard to try to sort out the crisis.

He has instructed Professor Michael Barber, head of the
No 10 delivery unit, to draw up a blueprint for combating the crime wave. It is expected to be completed within a month.

The move will be seen as an acknowledgment by Blair that Labour's promise to get tough on crime and its causes has not been realised.

Downing Street's intervention follows recent high-profile shootings, muggings and carjackings, including the murder of the estate agent Tim Robinson who was stabbed in the face and chest by two men after parking his car outside his home in Battersea, southwest London.

Figures from the 43 police forces in England and Wales show that street crime, including muggings and bag snatches, has risen by 26% in the past nine months.

The biggest rise was in West Yorkshire, where the number of muggings has jumped by 48% in the past year. Robberies in Bedfordshire have risen by 32% and in Hertfordshire by 21%.

In London police say the problem is reaching crisis point. Figures from last November show street crime up by 55% on the equivalent month in 2000. Over the past nine months street crime in the capital is up by 33%, from 26,715 incidents to 35,572.

One senior CID officer said: "It's out of control. There are car chases in the middle of the day with people firing guns at
each other. It's very much like New York in the 1980s."

The Metropolitan police believes it needs an extra 400 officers just to deal with the rise in murders. Those involving guns have doubled since last year. Ian Blair, the Met's deputy commissioner, said street crime was now as important a "difficulty" for ministers as the NHS and the railways.

David Blunkett is to meet Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, in London this week to discuss how he cut violent crime. The home secretary is likely to be reminded that New York, which has a similar population, has 42,000 police compared with 26,500 in London.

Barrie Irving, director of the Police Foundation, an independent think-tank, said improved measures to protect cars and homes had encouraged criminals to attack people on the street, with mobile phones an easy target.

The Downing Street blueprint on crime is expected to focus on the need to use more aggressive police tactics such as video surveillance and better intelligence gathering.

Ian Blair said: "There's got to be a twin-track approach of taking out the robbers and stopping the next generation becoming robbers. The first is a job for us; the second is a job for everybody."

[eyes_only]

Yup...

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Concealed carry would solve most of this problem in short order. Of course, the officials do not really WANT the crime problem solved- they just want to be able to hire more staff to "work on it".

[white trash redneck]

Boy, it sure is a good thing they outlawed guns in the UK!

[mvonfr]

Massive deportations might also be helpful. When you import criminals you will get crime.

You surely do not mean this. Muslems are peaceful, even if it muslem gangs that run the inner cities in the UK, and soon will be running the entire country.

[Argus]

This is a country that only prosecutes law-abiding citizens who use guns in self-defense, while it negotiates "peace treaties" with gun-toting criminal gangs.

[Travis McGee]

Time for the weekly Brit Bashing.

Cheerio!

[PatrioticAmerican]

"Time for the weekly Brit Bashing."

They deserve a bit of it. They question our ownership of firearms and support confiscation. It seems a bit of the old "I told you so" might be a good reminder for them.

[Travis McGee]

I don't disagree, but it does seem to get our stalwart Brit freepers worked into a lather.

Besides, they's d all be speaking German if it wasn't for us.

[Drew68]

Massive deportations might also be helpful.

Interesting fact omitted from this article. An overwhelming number of street criminals are Jamaicans, Africans and Pakistanis who are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.

[DesertWalker]

A point to remember is that the Eurosocialist looneys will never admit that they, or their policies, are wrong. They seem to have lost the will to run their own countries. London will have to be in flames before they are run out of power.

It's really sad to see such a fine culture go down the tubes.

[sneakypete]

Interesting fact omitted from this article.

Gee,you would almost wonder why they didn't mention this,wouldn't you? That is if we all didn't already know the reason.

[alfa6]

From a strictly production based view of WWII I do not think it would have mattered if the Brits had folded in 1940 or not. The United States had the ability to out produce both the Germans and Japanese combined.

However without the unsinkable aircraft carrier that was England it would have been a bloddy darn sight harder to beat the Nazi's.

Not to disparge the efforts of the English in the Pacific theater but by the the time the British made any worthwhile effort in the PTO the matter was pretty well settled.K

NOTICE, I am not bashing our English cousins just putting up a statement for the sake of discusion.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[potlatch]

Their 'Bobby's' don't even carry guns, just their little clubs. That may have to change.