Thursday, March 29, 2007

The U.K. has traded gun crime for knife crime.

By de Andréa

School Kids Strap on Stab-Proof Vests as Knife Crime Soars in English Schools in the U.K.

Ashgar Jilow used to sell stab-proof vests to nightclub bouncers and security guards at his London military surplus store. Now his clients are kids as young as 10 who fear they're going to be knifed at school or on the street.

``Some of them are so little, the vests don't even fit under their school uniforms,'' said Jilow, 55, who sells about three of the 120- British pound sterling ($230.00 American dollars) vests a week. ``Parents don't know what to do, to keep their kids safe.''

Since the gun ban in the U.K., the citizens have been left helpless to defend themselves against a would-be mugger, robber, or murderer. Now that the criminals know that the British public has been stripped of their ability to defend themselves, and being caught with a gun could be a serious jail sentence the street muggers have traded in their guns for knives.

This type of dangerous bullying has spread to the schools, with children now the victims of daily attacks. School and street gangs are copy-cat[ing] their adult counterparts with the easier obtainable weapon, the knife. There isn’t a household that doesn’t have several knives that any child could help themselves. Knives are easier to conceal than a gun and they can be used quietly.

Every week in London 52 teenagers are victims of knife crime, according to the Metropolitan Police. A child is stabbed to death in Britain every two weeks and knife killings outnumber gun homicides three to one, said Norman Brennan, a police officer and director of the Victims of Crime Trust.

What I have a difficult time comprehending; is why the British Government doesn’t Ban Crime instead of guns. Maybe I haven’t got a proper grasp of the situation, but it seems to me that if there were laws against crime, instead of laws against the defence of crime, one would make more progress in solving the problem; that is if one can properly identify the problem. I may have hit on something here; it could be that the Brits simply just don’t comprehend what the problem really is. It could be that they have misidentified the gun as the problem; one would think that after the gun-ban and the fact that the criminals simply switched weapons and continued down their road to crime that maybe the weapons were not the problem. On the other hand the lack of guns in the hands of the people could be at least part of the problem since the violent crime statistics mushroomed shortly after the gun ban went into effect. Now, innocent citizens would not be armed, something that the street criminals have looked forward to for years, criminals now rule the streets of London with a weapon almost a old as man himself, the common household knife or any sharpened object.

``Knife crime is out of control and kids carry them like fashion accessories copying their heroes the adult street criminals,'' Brennan said. The youngest child to be suspended from school for brandishing a blade was just five. Last week two teenagers were knifed to death in London. Adam Regis, 15, was attacked March 17 on his way home from the movies in Newham, an east London borough that is being regenerated for the 2012 Olympics. He called his girlfriend for help as he bled to death on the street, police said.

Three days earlier, Kodjo Yenga, 16, was stabbed to death as a gang of boys and girls chanted ``Kill him, kill him'' in Hammersmith, west London, where homes sell for more than 1 million pounds, eyewitnesses said.

Gang Culture: Statistics indicate that more children are reaching for blades as gang culture spreads. Some 42 percent of boys aged between 11 and 16 in state-funded schools admit to having carried a knife, according to the Youth Justice Board, which oversees punishment of child offenders.

Natashia Jackman, then 15, was stabbed in the eye with a pair of scissors at Collingwood College in Camberley, Surrey, by a 14- year-old girl who didn't like her taste in music.
Her assailant was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail in December.

Some students have brought machetes, combat knives, swords and sharpened screwdrivers to school, police say. Girls have been caught with blades hidden in lipstick and mascara tubes.

Security Guards: ``I wouldn't blame any parent for giving their child a stab vest if it makes them feel a bit more secure,'' said Nancy Odunewu, a pastor whose son Emmanuel, 19, was stabbed to death in Lewisham, southeast London, in November 2006. ``If I could have done anything to save my son then I would have.’’ She said all schools should have security guards and airport- style metal detectors. George Mitchell School in Leyton, east London, became the first in the capital to use handheld metal detectors for random checks.

Juvenile knife crime first grabbed the public's attention in the U.K. when 10-year-old Damilola Taylor was fatally stabbed by other youngsters on his way home from school in Peckham, east London, in November 2000, shortly after the total gun-ban. Prime Minister Tony Blair opened a community center named after Damilola in 2001. In February 2004, a 14-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of stabbing another teenager at the facility.

In 2004, 170 pupils between the ages of 12 and 14 were convicted of possessing knives, double the 2000 figure. Last year, one teacher was injured by a pupil every school day. In the 12 months to March 2006, knife crimes rose 73 percent, according to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.

Knife Amnesty: The report said the government's strategy for tackling knife crime was ``incoherent'' and criticized the lack of data. Home Secretary John Reid announced March 19 that, beginning in April, police will record knife crimes as a separate offense for a ``more detailed understanding'' of the problem.

The government's Violent Crime Reduction Act, passed last year, increases the maximum sentence for possession of a knife in a school or public place to four years from two and raises the minimum age for buying a knife to 18 from 16. An amnesty last year brought in more than 100,000 weapons.

Kids Company, a south London charity partly funded by the government, works to turn around the lives of violent children who have been expelled from school. ``At street level, children are getting killed,'' said Camila Batmanghelidjh, a psychotherapist who runs the program. ``They are sleeping with knives under their pillows because they don't feel safe.''

There's no doubt schools are getting more violent, said Jilow, whose military supply store has received 400 enquiries every week from parents about protective products. ``The 15- and 16-year-olds have started to ask for bullet- proof vests,'' he said. ``Some want it for protection, some as a status symbol. One group wanted to buy a gun. They wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't sell them.''

THE BOTTOM LINE: it looks to me as if the U.K. may have just come full circle, from guns to knives and then from the sound of it, knives back to guns again. Maybe and hopefully before it’s to late the Court Jesters that run the British government will finally realize that guns, knives, swords, large rocks, ball bats, bows and arrows, spears, catapults, bombs, poison, or scissors can all be tools, of either the criminal or the defender. It is obvious to any commoner that the criminal is the problem and not his tool, whatever it might be…
de Andréa.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well I must admit I do not think I have ever read something so misinformed or totally inaccurate in its point. The only thing that actually saves it is your summary which is correct. We need to target the criminals not what they use to create crime.

How do you come to the idea that criminals where waiting for the British public to become unarmed? They never where armed in the first place. There never has been the ability to legally carry arms in the UK, well at least in recent history (100-200 years)

There is no flood of crime, you just like the tabloid media, are just trying to exploit the few instances of these things.

Before commenting on a countries decline into knife crime perhaps you should research the whole country and not just a few instances.

PB