The savagery of the attack does point to someone with serious psychological problems alright. The number of wounds inflicted is mind-boggling but the burglary aspect is hard to reconcile with the latter attack.

They are very different crimes. It might be that they aren't related at all but if they are these guys have to be the unluckiest people in London. A title they are in the running for anyway.

It's funny when people talk about crime 'figures' because I would say 90% of my friends who live in the same area as me have been assaulted/mugged/abused in some way and I would say of that 90% of people, only 10% have ever bothered to report it to the inefficient, smug, useless Police force here
I see little reason why it's any different in any other big UK city.

B_M_L wrote:

Tommy Alpha wrote:That's the kid in peckham, right? It was the reporting of this and other incidents that I was thinking of when I started the thread. I wonder the extent of the notoriety of the incident, which extends far beyond word of mouth when it makes national news actually feeds into attitudes like the one above...

It was a weird atmosphere straight after - it's gone back to normal now though. The police were really visible for a week - then gone again. Most people new it wasn't a random attack - so you were as safe as ever. But the local kids really loved it. They're big boys now and they are much more visible out on the street.

Yeah, when I had to start commuting it was from Peckham and around that time. When the police would come out in force at Peckham Rye station, it was funny how obvious they would be in just filtering black kids through the knife detectors and into the weird little pen thing.

We had police with full on stab vests, guns, proper patrol vehicles - the full works at the time. Really quite an intense presence. My GF commented that seeing that actually made her more scared than normal. I sort of agree.

Last night as I walked up the high street 3 community support officers on scooters rode past in convoy while the local kids pointed and laughed. That's all that's left of the police down our street.

It's becoming a 'problem' because it's encroaching on white, middle-class society in our large metropolitan cities. We're all much more affluent than we were, say, 20-30 years ago, and in our major cities where you're invariably closer (physically, at least) to people that inhabit the other side of your social, cultural and financial divide you're being pushed even closer together by new development into traditionally cheaper areas. So living in your lavish live-work space in Stoke Newington or your gated, concierged studio apartment in Peckham, you may be getting relatively richer, but down there on the street (bleh) your neighbours from whatever estate are still mired in the same poverty they have been for decades. They're still as stabby as they ever were, but now that stabbiness is on your doorstep, and that's getting between you and your trip to Fresh and Wild. It's officially now one of your biggest anxieties. The government capitalises on this moral panic because it plays an important role in social control - 'policing the crisis', as Stuart Hall puts it. The wiki entry puts it pretty succinctly:

Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.

This shit is going to play itself out time and again in our lifetimes. The real issues here are poverty and inequality.

Well said Rimbaud III!

Who'da thunk it?

Rimbaud III wrote:This shit is going to play itself out time and again in our lifetimes. The real issues here are poverty and inequality.

Yes and no. I think I speak for most of my friends who live locally in saying we are exceptionally NOT well-off. Mugging one of us is a fairly pointless exercise - financially at least.

The increase in violence and 'pointless' violent behaviour (by that I mean violence without motive, violence for the sake of it - a random punch or act of vandalism for example) is largely down to the people who commit the acts knowing far more about the law and how it works than they ever used to.

Kids know they can't go to prison, they know that even if they're caught on CCTV camera doing something that it's highly unlikely they'll be prosecuted and even if they are the punishment will be minor. The Police are in a helpless situation but what makes it worse is that when something happens and you have to deal with the Police they often convey this helplessness to you, the victim.

Kids are always going to be bored. They're always going to fuck with stuff. But now, especially where I live, it's totally lawless. And the kids are so stupid that they will knife someone eventually or shoot someone (as has happened) because there is no ceiling on their behaviour.

To say it's because they're underprivileged is kind of missing the point. Most of the random acts of violence carried out locally to me have no financial motive at all. Someone I know's wife was really badly beaten by a gang of kids (13/14 yrs old) who tried to steal her dog while she walked it.

Meanwhile the Police force are drinking free coffee in Subway a good 2 miles away. But that's a whole different gripe.

honeyisfunny wrote:

Rimbaud III wrote:This shit is going to play itself out time and again in our lifetimes. The real issues here are poverty and inequality.

Yes and no. I think I speak for most of my friends who live locally in saying we are exceptionally NOT well-off. Mugging one of us is a fairly pointless exercise - financially at least.

The increase in violence and 'pointless' violent behaviour (by that I mean violence without motive, violence for the sake of it - a random punch or act of vandalism for example) is largely down to the people who commit the acts knowing far more about the law and how it works than they ever used to.

Kids know they can't go to prison, they know that even if they're caught on CCTV camera doing something that it's highly unlikely they'll be prosecuted and even if they are the punishment will be minor. The Police are in a helpless situation but what makes it worse is that when something happens and you have to deal with the Police they often convey this helplessness to you, the victim.

Kids are always going to be bored. They're always going to fuck with stuff. But now, especially where I live, it's totally lawless. And the kids are so stupid that they will knife someone eventually or shoot someone (as has happened) because there is no ceiling on their behaviour.

To say it's because they're underprivileged is kind of missing the point. Most of the random acts of violence carried out locally to me have no financial motive at all. Someone I know's wife was really badly beaten by a gang of kids (13/14 yrs old) who tried to steal her dog while she walked it.

Meanwhile the Police force are drinking free coffee in Subway a good 2 miles away. But that's a whole different gripe.

i agree, to use poverty as an excuse rather than the fact these people are just fucking scum is a complete cop out. my great great grandfathers worked down bloody coal mines all day and didnt go around stabbing everyone.

and i also agree with the coffee - costa is far better.

holmes wrote:i agree, to use poverty as an excuse rather than the fact these people are just fucking scum is a complete cop out. my great great grandfathers worked down bloody coal mines all day and didnt go around stabbing everyone.

I don't even know about that. There's something in people that makes them want to break stuff or set stuff on fire. Remember when you were a kid? You wanted to do those things I bet. I know I did. Somewhere along the line I realised, possibly through the efforts of my parents combined with a genuine respect and fear for the law, that this was the wrong thing to do. So I don't do it.

If someone said to you today

"Come round my house, it's on private land in a farm, and drive a car around really fast and then at the end of it you can smash it up with baseball bats and set it on fire. It's my car, I want you to do it"

of course you'd do it. It's fun.
But you wouldn't just go and do it to any car in the street. It's not because you're frightened of being caught, it's more a complex understanding of why laws exist and how your actions can hurt others.

Somewhere along the line, in the UK at least, there's been a flip around to it actually being desirable and a badge of 'hardness' to be able to hurt other people somehow. Or to bully people. Or to systematically break them over time.

I genuinely believe it's to do with popular culture showing the Police in a light that draws attention to their weaknesses and it shows people that there's nothing in the way of them doing as they please. When 'as they please' means getting enjoyment from others' suffering then we're in trouble. Which we are.

And another issue, especially in the area I live in, is the influx of people following the dropping of borders within Europe. It's a complex issue and one politicians won't ever hit head-on for fear of being called a racist.
But a lot of Eastern European males of a certain age are moving to England for short periods of time to make money and it only takes one look on the walls of the shops and bars they open to see who their hero is - Tony Montana. No shit. It's almost funny. But right now in my neighbourhood we have something approaching gang war as these idiots live out their Hollywood fantasies for real. I have been in the corner shop and the owner has locked me and my girlfriend inside while a gang of about 5 guys literally ripped a Volkswagen apart that was parked outside the store. Pulled the doors off it, the bonnet, ripped the tyres, stamped the bodywork to pieces, smashed the windows.
The Police dragged themselves away from Subway long enough to finally turn up later and after asking us and the shop owner what we had seen they basically dismissed it as 'in fighting' and left.
That shit is just going to escalate and escalate...