HOW MANY MORE?
27 teens ALL stabbed to death in just a year. As MPs and police row over what to do, the urgent question...
MINISTERS and police chiefs clashed last night over whether a surge in knife deaths is linked to tumbling officer numbers.
The families of the latest teenage stab victims – girl scout Jodie Chesney and private school pupil Yousef Makki, both 17 – yesterday told of their horror and devastation.
In an impassioned Commons statement, Jodie’s constituency MP Julia Lopez, a Tory backbencher, warned that the public was losing faith in the Government’s ability to keep the streets safe.
Her Labour colleague Stella Creasy, whose east London seat has been blighted by knife killings, joined her call for urgent action. She told Home Secretary Sajid Javid: ‘The taskforces, the consultations, the more reports, it isn’t working. This is an emergency that requires an emergency response.’
Over the past 12 months, 27 under-19s have been stabbed to death. There were 285 knife killings in all – the highest toll since the Second World War.
Twenty people – including Jaden Moodie, who was just 14 – have been murdered in London in the first three months of 2019.
Official figures show that in the year to September, ‘Wild West Britain’ suffered 110 knife crimes a day – including attacks with deadly ‘zombie’ weapons fashioned with serrated blades.
Theresa May, who spent six years at the Home Office, which oversees the police, yesterday claimed it was a mistake to link the knife epidemic with police cuts, insisting there was ‘ no direct correlation’.
Ministers pointed out that in the early 2000s, when serious violent crimes were at their highest, police numbers were rising.
But senior police officers and opposition MPs said the Government’s austerity drive was among the reasons for the spiralling bloodshed.
Ex-Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe said an extra 20,000 officers were needed. That would almost make up for the decline in numbers in the past decade from around 143,700 to 122,400.
Jodie, a popular A-level pupil who had recently been invited to Downing Street with her scout group, was killed in an unprovoked attack as she sat with her boyfriend and three friends listening to music in a park in east London on Friday evening. Her family yesterday appealed to her killer to have the ‘decency’ to hand himself in.
Yousef, a pupil at Manchester Grammar School who had dreams of becoming a heart surgeon, was murdered in the affluent Cheshire village of Hale Barns on Saturday.
His family, from Burnage in Manchester, said: ‘We are absolutely devastated and cannot believe that our son has gone. This senseless loss has affected the whole community.’
Two 17-year- old boys have been arrested on suspicion of his murder.
Mrs May rejected the link to falling officer numbers when answering questions from reporters in Salisbury yesterday. She said: ‘There’s no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers.
‘What matters is how we ensure that police are responding to these criminal acts when they take place, that people are brought to justice. But what also matters is, as a Government, that we look at the issues which underpin, that underlie, this use of knives and that we act on those. Why it is that so many young people are carrying knives?’
Experts have warned that youths carry blades for status and protection, and are increasingly desensitised to the realities and dangers. But Mrs May’s remarks will anger those who say cuts to police and youth services are a key factor.
The National Audit Office has said that since 2010-11, police funding has fallen 19 per cent in real terms to £12.3billion a year. The Prime Minister also reduced stop and search while at the Home Office. Police chiefs blame an increase in stabbings and gang violence on the move.
Graham McNulty, Met deputy assistant commissioner, said: ‘I can’t magic officers out of thin air, but we are lucky that we have got officers who are professional and committed and want to make a difference at the moment.’
He said an increased police presence in London had allowed officers to conduct 2,500 stop-and- searches in the past three days alone.
Policing minister Nick Hurd said an extra £460million was being invested to recruit 2,500 more officers nationwide. But Lord Hogan-Howe said: ‘When are they going to be here? Even if you press the button today and, I would argue, get the 20,000 back, you’re not going to get them tomorrow. You’ve got to recruit them, you’ve got to train them.’
John Apter, national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, which represents the rank and file, said: ‘Policing has been stripped to the bone and the consequences are clear, splashed across newspaper front pages and TV news bulletins – children being murdered on our streets.
‘This is the true cost of austerity that we warned of but were ridiculed for doing so. Those concerns have become a reality but still the Prime Minister fails to accept the harsh truth.’
In a statement to the Commons, Mr Javid said he was taking action to tackle the ‘cycle of senseless violence that is robbing young people of their lives’.
He described knife crime as a ‘complex’ issue with more than one reason behind the bloodshed, including changes in the drugs market.
‘This is the true cost of austerity’