I’M NOT ‘ MISSING IN ACTION’ SAYS LONDON MAYOR
Not me, insists the Mayor of London in this impassioned defence of his response to the capital’s knife deaths epidemic
HEARTBREAKING, distressing, deeply depressing. Yet even these words fail to do justice to the emotions that we have all felt following t he series of murders and violent attacks across London – and Britain – over recent weeks.
Every fatal attack l eaves another family in mourning, friends and often schoolmates in shock, and a community in fear. And it is often the very poorest communities – black Londoners in particular – that are bearing the brunt of this brutality.
My message to those tempted towards violent crime is clear: there is never, ever any excuse for carrying a knife or other weapon. If you do, you will be caught, arrested and the full force of the law will be brought down on you – and you will have brought it on yourself.
As the Mayor of London, I am doing everything possible with the powers and funding available to me to tackle this menace.
The Met Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, and I have announced a new 120- strong Violent Crime Taskforce of specialist officers to target the most violent individuals and gangs in London – to get them off our streets for any crimes they commit, no matter how small.
The taskforce will focus solely on violent and serious crime, using a range of lawfully audacious tactics to identify and arrest offenders. They will use an ‘anytime, anyplace and anywhere’ approach – giving violent criminals no respite.
This will give the police an even greater presence in crime hotspots, and more capacity for covert operations and to use tactics including intelligenceled stop and search, backed up by body-worn cameras.
This new team is in place because of the difficult decision I took earlier this year to divert £110 million of funding away from other priorities in London, and to put it into supporting 1,000 police officers on the capital’s streets.
Police officers should be confident to use stop and search powers when it is targeted and intelligence-led.
The roll- out of body- worn cameras has been a gamechanger – officers are better protected against complaints, and people know their encounter with the police is recorded.
DURING the next few weeks, intelligenceled stop and search will be used more, based on suspicion of carrying a weapon. This should lead to a safer city.
As well as being tough on crime, we need to be tough on the causes of crime. So I have also launched a £45 million Young Londoners Fund – to increase opportunities for young people and provide alternative paths away from crime – with better youth services, community sports, and more support for tackling mental health and other issues that contribute to violent crime.
We’re also funding programmes aimed at helping people leave gangs – in total, 23 gang- crime- related projects. We are investing £8.3 million in these projects over two years.
As the father of two teenage children living in London, this is personal to me. I can’t help but worry about whether they are safe when they are out and about. That’s why I have been so outraged by the Conservative Party’s attempts to turn knife crime into a political football for their own benefit. This is so much more important than party politics.
They’ve claimed that knife crime is only rising in London – which is a lie. They’ve claimed it only started rising when I became Mayor – also a lie. They’ve claimed that their drastic cuts to the police and youth services have had no impact – another lie.
And l ast week t hey even accused me of going missing, when I was in fact working with the Met Commissioner and my Deputy Mayor for Policing to try to tackle the problem.
So, for the record, here is the truth they are so keen to avoid talking about:
Knife crime is rising at almost exactly the same rate across the whole of England and Wales (21 per cent) as it is in London (23 per cent).
This is a national problem that needs national solutions – led by the Government.
It started to rise in 2014 – under the previous Mayor, and two years before I was elected.
The Government has cut funding for the Metropolitan Police by £ 700 million since 2010 – with another £325 million of cuts planned by 2021. That has resulted in 4,345 fewer police staff posts, 3,016 fewer support officers, 120 fewer police buildings and fewer frontline police officers.
The Government has also cut hundreds of millions of pounds from youth and support services that provide paths away from crime.
THIS has meant at least 12,700 fewer places at youth centres in London since 2011. Health and education services that young people rely on are desperately underfunded and overstretched. And where have the Prime Minister and Home Secretary been throughout this? In hiding and absent on the job.
Theresa May has i gnored repeated requests to meet me to discuss how the Government can help tackle violent crime.
And tomorrow, Amber Rudd will launch a new violence strategy that will apparently include no extra resources for the police, local authorities or the communities most affected, and will do very little to help tackle this problem in London or around the country.
Let me be clear: I will never shirk my responsibility to tackle violence. I am spending every single penny available to me to tackle violent crime, using every single power and tactic available to the police to clamp down on offenders, and spending every minute at City Hall focusing on this issue.
But until Theresa May and the Government stop playing politics with violent crime and start actually investing and doing something meaningful in all the areas that are their responsibility – education, health, prison, probation – both I and the Met Police will continue to be obstructed, with one hand tied behind our backs.
I worry about whether my teenage children are safe