Category: Policing

6th and 7th teen murders

Regrettably it seems that the teenage murder epidemic in London has claimed its 6th and 7th victims already this year. 16 year old Ofiyke Nmezu died after being assaulted with a brick last Friday. See newspaper report here and BBC coverage here.

On Sunday Teng Le dies after being stabbed in a nightclub. See BBC report here.

It appears that Edmonton has a really serious problem as three of these attacks occurred there.

1 January: Henry Bolombi, 18, stabbed
5 January: Faridon Alizada, 18, stabbed
21 January: Boduka Mudianga, 18, stabbed
26 January: Fuad Buraleh, 19, beaten
19 February: Sunday Essiet, 15, stabbed
29 February: Ofiyke Nmezu, 16, beaten
2 March: Teng Le, 17, stabbed

Mayor Johnson Policing

The Met is after Boris

Back Boris Boris Johnson was somewhat bemused today to receive a letter from the police regarding an alleged crime from 2003 – he wrote an article in the Telegraph relating how he picked up a damaged cigar case in the ruins of the home of former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.

The Met says:

Police attention has been drawn to reports suggesting that you have in your possession an item that may be Iraqi cultural property, namely a cigar case from the address of Tariq Aziz… The reports further suggest that the item was illegally removed from Iraq since 6th August 1990.

Boris says:

There were over 18,000 crimes in London last month and yet the police write to me about this? What this shows is a concerted effort by my political opponents to waste police time by dragging up an article that I wrote 5 years ago and trying to make political mileage out of it. When knife crime is on the rise in our capital city, can it be right that police time is allowed to be wasted in this way?

Quite. The 18,000 crimes, actually nearer 19,000, recorded by the Met in January are analysed here.

Update: Link to letter here.

Policing

5th teen murder in Plumstead

Post author By Phil
Post date 20th Feb 2008
2 Comments on 5th teen murder in Plumstead

Yesterday afternoon saw London’s 5th teen murder in 2008. This time in Invermore Place, Plumstead near Woolwich.

I was hoping that after January’s grim toll of 4 deaths we could get through February without.

According the Standard piece today the 15-year old kid was hunted down and stabbed to death in the street by a gang of five youths. The co-writer of the report is Benedict Moore-Bridger late of Ealing Times.

Covered by the BBC also here.

Until the police can work out how to stop these kids carrying this will continue.

Update: More details from the BBC here.

I have listed the names, ages and cause of death of these five young men below:

1 January: Henry Bolombi, 18, stabbed to death
5 January: Faridon Alizada, 18, stabbed to death
21 January: Boduka Mudianga, 18, stabbed to death
26 January: Fuad Buraleh, 19, beaten to death
19 February: Sunday Essiet, 15, stabbed to death

Comment is free Mayor Johnson Policing

Boris’ crime manifesto

Back Boris I went into town yesterday morning to listen to Boris’ crime manifesto launch. It was a treat to be in the 28th floor conference suite at Millbank Tower. It has 270 degree views of the London and the Thames which looked magnificent in the sunshine and receding mist.

I wrote a report for the Guardian’s Comment is free blog. Their deputy editor, Matt Seaton, has asked me to do a weekly piece in the run up to mayoral election. Apparently they want to make sure they’re “covering the waterfront politically”. Very commendable. Anyway don’t stress, I haven’t gone soft.

Back to Boris. The speech was absolutely rigid with numbers and the manifesto document is referenced and footnoted throughout. It looks more like a scientific paper than manifesto. Clearly Boris’ team are savvy enough to know that if they make uncosted promises or get the numbers wrong they will get into trouble with the more nerdy bloggers like me as well as the Mayor’s press machine. Although Boris retained his lightness of touch it would be hard to argue on the basis of this performance that Boris has not had his Prince Hal moment. For the whole piece follow this link.

At the event I introduced myself to Tim Mongomerie who did this piece yesterday for ConservativeHome. He congratulated me on this blog and the jacket I was wearing. He wondered if it was German. I explained that it came from Ted Baker and was a birthday present from my wife.

See it on TV here.

Ex-Mayor Livingstone Policing

Two young men knifed to death over the weekend

Post author By Phil
Post date 11th Feb 2008
No Comments on Two young men knifed to death over the weekend

Thankfully we have had no more teenagers killed since the Dean Gardens stabbing in January. Unfortunately two twenty-something men died of stab wounds over the weekend.

A 27 year old man died on Sunday morning as a result of wounds received in a street stabbing in Stratford on Friday evening and a 28 year old man died on Sunday evening after being stabbed in a Pinkwell Park in Hayes.

The Mayor and the Met are not tackling knife crime nearly urgently enough.

Ex-Mayor Livingstone Mayor Johnson Policing

PM contradicts the Mayor

Yesterday the Mayor was making a song and dance about police numbers in his budget speech, and the Prime Minister immediately contradicted him.

The Mayor claims 10,000 extra officers in London under his tenure. He is of course counting PCSOs as the equivalent of PCs whereas as even our dissimulating PM will not go that far. The Mayor also does a bit of erroneous rounding.

Yesterday dismal Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon asked this patsy question of the PM at Prime Minister’s Questions:

Will my right hon. Friend personally congratulate Chief Superintendent Steve Kavanagh, his officers and police community support officers, and especially the safer neighbourhoods teams on their achievement in cutting crime in Barnet by 8.6 per cent. so far this year, on top of 16 per cent. last year, with 24.6 per cent. in total? That is one of the best records in the Met. With 5,600 extra officers and 3,700 PCSOs in London provided by the Mayor, what does my right hon. Friend think the result will be of the cuts in the budget proposed by the Tory candidate for London Mayor?

Note that Andrew Dismore shows his ignorance of basic maths – you multiply percentage in this case not add them.

The PM answered as follows:

In the London area alone, there are 6,000 more police than there were in 1997. As my hon. Friend rightly said, in graphic detail, crime is down in his constituency. The choice in London will be between an administration that wants to employ more police and wants to get crime down, and what the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) has said, which is that he wishes to cut spending on the Metropolitan police. That would be disastrous for the police, disastrous for London and bad for the whole country.

This response caused Boris Johnson to lose his rag – quite right too. Read about it here.

So, the PM says 6,000, Dismore says 9,300 and the Mayor says 10,000. The rounding issue is important, if Dismore’s numbers are right, because the Mayor is talking about adding 1,000 officers next year. If he does we will then have 10,300 officer next year but the Mayor is already claiming 10,000 when in reality we have 9,000 extra – if you round like a normal person. It seems that the Mayor’s maths is as bad as Dismore’s.

Policing

4th teen murder in Dean Gardens

Post author By Phil
Post date 26th Jan 2008
8 Comments on 4th teen murder in Dean Gardens

Rather horribly it looks like London’s 4th teen murder of the year happened in Dean Gardens, West Ealing, early this morning. Four in the space of a month is frightening indeed, all the more so as this latest incident is so close to home. See BBC coverage here.

The BBC says:

A teenager has died in hospital after an attack with a “blunt instrument” in a west London park.

Police found the young man, who is believed to be 19, after they were called to Dean Gardens, West Ealing, in the early hours of the morning.

He was taken to hospital but died 40 minutes later from head injuries. A murder inquiry has been launched.

Policing

Crime glaze over

My eyes did rather glaze over when the Mayor tried to do his crime porkies act again yesterday.

Halfway through the financial year he did a piece and I laboriously went through the figures to show that the Mayor was at best exaggerating and at worst simply lying about the trajectory of crime in London.

His trick is to talk about recent falls, many of which are driven by changes in reporting, eg many frauds being handled by banks rather than the Police, and changes in our behaviour, us locking our houses up better and taking more care of our cars, and to ignore soaring crime in his first term as Mayor.

The Mayor thinks this is a good news story so he ran it on October 18th (after the half way point of the financial year) and again yesterday after the end of the calendar year. No doubt he will run it for a third time in mid April, just before the elections (after the end of the financial year). Funnily he didn’t make a big thing of the 2003/4 murder peak at 204 in April 2004. Yesterday of course he failed to mention the 26 teen murders we endured in 2007. He talks of more police on the beat but will not explain how a threefold increase in the precept since the formation of the GLA has resulted in such a small uplift in police numbers.

Now that Team Boris is up and running their rebuttal skills have improved markedly and this press release sums the situation up nicely.

Update: For more insight read the excellent Burning Our Money blog here.

Ex-Mayor Livingstone Policing

2nd teen knife murder in 2008

Post author By Phil
Post date 6th Jan 2008
No Comments on 2nd teen knife murder in 2008

After last year’s tally of 26 teen murder victims, see previous posting, we have already had 2 in 2008 so far, see BBC story.

The latest took place in Erith, South London. According to the BBC:

The youth is the second London teenager to die of stab wounds this year.

On New Year’s Day, 17-year-old Henry Bolombi was chased by a group of youths and then stabbed in the chest in Edmonton, north London.

Last year 26 teenagers were killed in stabbings and shootings in London.

With one murder on New Year’s Eve and one on Saturday morning 2008 is looking like it will be grimmer still for London’s teenagers.

Ex-Mayor Livingstone Policing

It’s not hard – get the knives off them

Post author By Phil
Post date 2nd Jan 2008
No Comments on It’s not hard – get the knives off them

Media tart Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, is finding it hard to keep out of the media. Only last month he was on the Radio 4 Today programme describing himself as a limpet, see here.

He was at it again on the Today programme yesterday morning effectively complaining that the Police’s remit was too wide. The Tory candidate for the West Central London Assembly seat, Kit Malthouse, writes about Blair in the Times today and is not overly impressed. Blair talked about how the Police have to deal with everything from terrorism to social cohesion. Apparently people on the Metropolitan Police Authority have been on at him to tackle wildlife crime in London. What? How hard is it for Blair to reply to whoever it is on the MPA as follows: “We had 26 teenagers, one every fortnight, stabbed or shot or beaten to death in London last year. I am very happy to look at tackling wildlife crime once I have got this death toll down to maybe one or two a year. Until then bog right off.”

I note that Blair has not been using his airtime to draw attention to the teenage death toll in London. Probably because it runs against the positive mood music that Blair and the Mayor are trying to put out around policing in the run up to the mayoral elections.

I note that Blair didn’t complain about Police resources being diverted to policing the Mayor’s New Year’s Eve party.

One of the biggest problems with policing in London is that you and me as precept payers provide the largest share of the Met’s revenue but its commissioner is appointed by the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary gets to tell him what to do. To the extent we have local accountability it is down to the Metropolitan Police Authority which is packed with appointees who have no mandate. If it was left to Assembly members Blair would have been fired already.

In a sensible world the London Assembly would appoint a commissioner who would worry about London and leave the Home Office to discharge its own responsibilities using its own agencies as it saw fit. London’s police could then protect London and Londoners and Blair wouldn’t have to stress about what his role was. If he lost focus on it the Assembly could quickly remind him.