You call that a knife?
Despite Labour promises to crack down on violent attacks, the number of assaults using a knife has risen starkly. Last week, two teenagers were stabbed to death in separate attacks within hours of each other in London.Mr Grayling said: “If you are found carrying a knife, if you attack a stranger in the street, you should end up in the courts and then behind bars. You should not get a caution, or as I heard recently, a £65 penalty notice for carrying a three foot Samurai sword around. That must stop.” telegraph
My English friends tell me that there really is no point in going to England now simply because the louts have spoiled so much of it. It is nice to hear a Shadow critic suggesting an end to “caution culture” but it will take a bit of doing when the British Police can be routed by a couple of hundred Muslim youths armed with nothing more than stones.
I am lucky enough to live in a town where the police take a proactive attitude. Yes, I suspect they roust the occasional panhandler off the Avenue and, yes, they are all over the kids who drink beer at the end of our street. But they don’t beat people up; rather they make it very clear that the illegal activity has to stop or there will be real consequences. For the panhandlers it is a drive through the tweed curtain. For the kids the beers are gone and there may be an uncomfortable hour or two at the rather posh police station while their parents are found.
The point being that Oak Bay is a very safe place. Better than safe, it is welcoming.
Good policing is about prevention. But, to prevent, a policeman has to be out of his or her car and in the community. This is very tough in big cities. But it is what will work. It requires more police and more skillful police with a broad array of alternatives for dealing with problems before they happen. Great policing is all about sufficient manpower and a culture of respect rather than one of confrontation.
If you are dealing with a bunch of kids with knives confrontation has replaced respect and locking up the knife owners is, at best, a stopgap. Moving a society, a culture, from knife carrying to respect cannot be done at a national level. Instead, police, parents, local government and schools all have a part to play. Locally, where you know the kid’s name.
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 am
Britain is the model socially engineered micro managed EU utpoian state. The daily civil unrest, dystopian justice and increased crime and violence speaks volumes as to how well this big brother micromanagement approach is working.
Britons have surrendered so much civil liberty and individual freedom to the nanny state, in return for promissory security, the civil culture now resembles the bee hive social ideal of the Fabians…however the safety of the common “bee” from violent predators in either the anarchy of a wild swarm or a micro organized hive society remains the same.
The utopian hive’s tame bee, deprived the use of a stinger, and pacified to the point of self sacrifice is a far easier target for predators both inside and outside the hive.
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Oak Bay police sound like the police that Victoria needs. Why the difference? Victoria is becoming unlivable with all the “homeless” druggies and beggars.
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
WL, I don’t know where you got that idea. For starters, the problem is British culture, not the EU - this has been a problem for longer than the EU has been around. It is escalating in direct proportion to the deterioration of Britain’s economy, which began with Thatcher (to be charitable, it ultimately began with WWII, she just put the nails in the coffin). Second, it’s not the nanny state the is the exacerbating factor, it is the surveillance state brought in by the Tories concomitant with (strangely) a general disregard by the police for youth crime – in English culture, where corporal punishment is still the norm, “taking your lumps” is considered manly, and complaining when you are beaten and hospitalized is not. The schools are really barbaric, unless you can afford a public school, and then they’re merely humiliating and emasculating.
My friend in Manchester: Aren’t you going to arrest them? Those are the three who put me in the hospital.
Police officer: Nah, they’ll just do it again. Why bother?
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
(Oh, yeah, why he was beaten up? Sitting in a park reading a book.)