links for 2008-05-30

• Blog: Education is key to tackling knife crime
  It’s been widely reported that most of those carrying weapons today are doing it out of fear, not intent. It is bullying in its most extreme form.
• Government launches hard-hitting campaign designed at discouraging young people from carrying knives
  Graphic images that form part of a fictional medical lecture over treating stab wounds show gaping wounds and knives, and a screwdriver, embedded in victims’ bodies.
• 15 and counting « Black Pearl
  I’m sick and tired of people blaming communities: “There aren’t enough youth clubs”, “There isn’t much for youth to do.” My take on that? Absolute rubbish.
• ‘Bring back the death penalty for knife crime’
  Roger Gale, the Tory MP for North Thanet, said that bringing back capital punishment for murder was the only way to deter people from carrying knives, short of banning all tools and kitchen utensils that could cause harm.

Video of the day

Today’s video -created by you out there – is a two parter.
Stemming from a street robbery, the drama in dramatic fashion.
As Shahtime explains on the film’s YouTube host page: ‘Starring Ashrak, Juned & Ana, 2 thugs try jacking a teen for a damn phone, teen fights back and gets away.’
Written by Shahed, directed by Javed.
Part I: Ride Wiv It

Part II: Ride Wiv It (Vengeance)

Boy, 16, in custody over Camden shooting

ITN reports that police are questioning a 16-year-old boy suspected of murdering Sharmaake Hassan, 17, who was shot in the head in Camden on Saturday.

Hassan, the 15th teenager to die as a result of knife and gun crime in London this year, died in hospital on Wednesday. Believed to have been a member of The Money Squad gang, Hassan was found guilty at Thames Youth Court last month of possessing and offering to supply cannabis.

The arrested teenager is being held at a north London police station.

The ITN report added that the local authorities tried to ban alleged gang members from Camden at an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) hearing a fortnight ago.

links for 2008-05-29

• A new breed of leaders can tackle knife culture
  The MTV Base generation, with their pimp-roll swaggers and their perverted notions of masculinity and faux respect, urgently need taking to task.
  (tags: black culture, knife crime, gun middle class)
• New Statesman – Boris’s scary arches
  Barely a month into his new job as Mayor of London, and Boris Johnson is instituting the kind of authoritarian measures he used to slate as the bossy “schoolmarminess of Blair’s Britain”. His scariest plan is to cover London with ominous-sounding “knife a
  (tags: boris johnson, scanners, knife crime)
• BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | How can we tackle knife crime?
  Comments from the public on the govt’s new ant-knife campaign
  (tags: knife crime)
• Sky News: Knife Crime: Call To End Young People’s Exposure To Violent Games And Adverts
  “Soaps like EastEnders show people being stabbed to death, and popular characters who solve problems with a gun. It influences them.”
  (tags: culture, knife crime, video games, sopa operas)
• Stabby Joe and Why Knives Don’t Make You Hard
  The Government needs to get tough; if you get caught with a knife, 5 years hard time. Use that knife to harm someone, serious or not, life.
  (tags: tough sentencing, knife crime, opinion)
• Timeline: London teen killings
  BBC’s graphical history of teenage victims of gun and knife crime in 2008
  (tags: gun crime, knife teenage violence, murder)

Another day, another death

Sharmaake Hassan, 17, was found in Gilbeys Yard, Camden, last Saturday.
He’d been shot in the head.
After being taken to hospital suffering severe injuries, he died yesterday.
So far, police have arrested no-one over the incident.
Since the beginning of the year, 15 teenagers have died in London as a result of similar attacks.
How many more?

New knife crime campaign

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more about “Knife crime campaign launched“, posted with vodpod

The goverment has launched a new campaign against knife crime today. The £3 million budget makes the point that if you carry a knife, you’re more likely to have it used against you in a fight.

The campaign pulls few punches in showing the effects of stabbing. And Met Police chief Sir Ian Blair makes three points pretty plain:

• We’re more likely to be stopped and searched now
• If found with a knife, we’ll be prosecuted
• Jail time is definitely on the cards

Sounds like now’s the time to lose the knives. Your thoughts?

links for 2008-05-28

• Home-grown crime -Times Online
  Comment: “This will send a message says the policeman,after the trial, on the court steps. Oh no it wont.The part of our society that produces this underclass do not read newspapers or watch TV news (tags: knife crime, violent crime statistics, criminal sentencing)

• Knife crime: Top cop Sir Ian Blair says parents should quiz kids over carrying knives – Mirror.co.uk
  Figures unearthed by the Mirror revealed attacks by youngsters are soaring, with 56,000 violent attacks last year compared with 34,000 in 2003.
  (tags: knife crime, operation blunt)
• Film star urges end to violence
  Young film director and actor Noel Clarke has called for youths to walk away from street crime.
  (tags: adulthood, kidulthood, gang culture)
• The War on Guns: A Tricky Proposition
  Musician Tricky has blamed hip hop for the rise in knife and gun crime across Britain. Funny–I have the same access to it as everybody else, and I haven’t stabbed or shot anybody
  (tags: tricky, gun crime, opinion)
• Gangs blamed for gun crime rise
  “Some people hiding drugs, gangs battering others, shootings, smashing bottles, it’s good to watch – but if it happens to you it’s a different story”
  (tags: gang culture, violence, gun crime)
• Crime falls on London transport
  Knife crime on mainline stations has been cut from a mid-2006 peak of about 70 every month to about 20
  (tags: knife crime, tube, scanners, operation blunt)
• Why knife crime cuts us to the quick | spiked
  Why have we blown up knife crime, the ‘knife culture’ and anti-social youth into such a defining issue of the age? And isn’t there a risk of this panic becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Have you carried a knife?

That’s the question that Haroon Siddique is asking in the Guardian News Blog today.

We often hear that the “fear of crime” is increasing as the rate of crime is decreasing. Has an age-old problem been exaggerated by media headlines or is this a frightening new development that makes you fear for your safety? Have you ever carried a knife? Do you know anyone who has? If so, why?

Hmm. Do today’s knife-carrying teenagers read the Guardian? Seems a tad unlikely. Still, some of the comments are interesting:

~ I grew up in the east end of Glasgow and occasionally carried a knife purely for protection – after being gang-raped it was necessity.

~ I believe the problem is worse than it appears on the surface.

~ I chose a box-cutter because you can’t stab with it (which is usually what kills), plus the blade is not long enough to reach an artery (same reason), but it gives a spectacular slash of high deterrence value.

Worth a read.

New support for victims of crime

It’s hard to believe 15 years have passed since Stephen Lawrence died following an attack by a group of white boys in Eltham, south-east London.
Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brooks was there, and, though much controversy has shrouded Stephen’s death ever since, Duwayne’s keen to put his experience to positive use, setting up the Brooks Foundation for Victims of Crime.
Watch the video to find out why he’s done it.

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‘Just walk away’

A young film-maker hopes his new movie will help fight the street crime war – by encouraging people to simply walk away.

ITN reports that Noel Clarke, writer/director/star of Adulthood (the sequel to 2006’s street culture pic Kidulthood, in which he played a knife-wielding schoolboy) is getting ready for his film’s release. But in light of the recent killings, he said:

“I’m not a politician. I can’t provide all the answers. But my part as a filmmaker is to raise questions.”I would like people to see this film and see what I’m trying to say which is, ‘You can walk away.’

“If someone hits you you don’t have to go and get your friends and hit them back. You can walk away and that’s what I’m trying to say is walk away.”