Met Police struggling to cope with soaring knife AND gun crime
Warning as two youths are killed in just 90 minutes
KNIFE and gun crime is rocketing as youngsters think it is ‘trendy’ to carry a weapon, police said yesterday as two students were slain within 90 minutes of each other in London.
Britain’s biggest police force admitted it is battling an explosion in knife and gun crimes committed by young people as senior officers said it had become cool to carry weapons for status or protection.
In a stark illustration of the problem, two young men, a 20-year- old business student and a 19-year- old footballer, were knifed to death in the capital on Tuesday.
Scotland Yard published shocking statistics yesterday showing that crime levels are soaring, while detection levels are falling across every major crime group.
Just weeks on from the Westminster terror attack by Khalid Masood who stabbed a police officer to death and killed four others, the force released deeply worrying figures showing that knife crime is up 24 per cent in a year with 12,074 offences last year, compared to 9,742 in 2015/16.
Gun crime has also shot up by 28 per cent in 2016/7, with 306 guns fired on London’s streets compared to 239 cases the year before.
The figures come weeks after a watchdog said policing in England and Wales is in a ‘potentially perilous state’ as Government cuts lead to investigations being shelved, victims being let down and tens of thousands of suspects remaining at large.
In a report on effectiveness in policing, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary uncovered a range of ‘dangerous’ and ‘disturbing’ practices that have arisen out of police forces’ approach to dealing with budget cuts in excess of 20 per cent.
Yesterday the Metropolitan Police said its rising offences reflected a national increase in crime rates which has come amid falling crime detection rates due to police numbers and staff being slashed.
Since 2009 forces have lost about 21,500 officers.
Meanwhile senior officers said more youngsters who aren’t criminals were carrying weapons, with just a quarter of knife crimes being carried out by gangs.
Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt, head of territorial policing, described it as a ‘phenomenon’ saying: ‘I went to a primary school recently and I asked how many in this class of 30 kids knew someone who carries a knife. Three quarters of the class put their hands up.
‘That’s really worrying as most of these children would not be those that we would stop and search because they are tenyear-old kids.
‘The reality is that people who carry knives are much more likely to be stabbed than people who don’t. Parents and teachers need to do something to stop this phenomenon.’
He said officers were increasingly seeing weapons being carried in public or hidden in schools and parks, adding: ‘I didn’t want to use the word “trendy” but that is part of it.’ Overall, the number of offences in London rose for the first time in several years. There was a total of 774,737 crimes recorded in the capital last year – compared to 740,933 in 2015, a rise of 4.5 per cent. The figures, which did not include cyber crimes, showed increases in the number of muggings, sex offences, thefts and violent offences. There was a 26 per cent leap in the rate of motor vehicle thefts and a 13 per cent rise in personal robberies.
Earlier this year the outgoing Met chief Sir Bernard HoganHowe criticised Government cuts to policing, saying that the warning lights were flashing after official figures confirmed an increase in murder and knife crime.
The statistics were revealed on the same day it was announced that two young men were murdered within barely an hour of each other in London.
Business student Syed Jamanoor Islam, 20, died after being set upon by a group of men in Mile End, East London, at about 5.30pm on Tuesday.
His family believe the aspiring artist was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ as a row broke out and he was beaten with a baseball bat and then stabbed in the side.
Just an hour earlier 19-yearold Abdullahi Tarabi was stabbed to death in Northolt, West London.
The promising teenage footballer was knifed in the stomach in front of horrified families after being chased through an estate.
‘Parents and teachers need to do something’