IT WAS another bloody week in London. On April 4th a young man was stabbed to death in the street. Earlier that day, a man died in a bookmaker’s and, across town, another was fatally stabbed. On April 3rd a 16-year-old boy died from gunshot wounds. The day before, a 17-year-old died in her mother’s arms after being shot from a passing car. On April 1st a 20-year-old was stabbed to death. So far this year, the capital has seen 51 murders.
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The press is alarmed. Last weekend the Sunday Times claimed that London “is starting to look a bit like New York once did”. That is overstating things. London’s murder tally last year was far lower than that of New York, let alone that city’s peak of 2,245 in 1990. There were 130 murders in London in 2017, compared with 292 across the pond. Though London’s total was a little higher than New York’s in February and March, it was far lower in January.
Yet there are good reasons for Londoners to be concerned. There were more murders in March than in any month for more than a decade. Violent crime involving a knife rose by a third in the 12 months to July 2017. The victims are often young and are disproportionately black.
Why is London getting so bloody? About 40% of youth homicides are gang-related. Some target teenagers who are being used to run cash and drugs to lucrative markets beyond the capital. Feuds escalate more quickly than in the past, because rival gangs goad each other on social media, police say. Others point to the dwindling number of coppers on the beat: the number of officers in England and Wales has fallen by 19% since its peak in 2010. “Neighbourhood policing has all but vanished,” says David Lammy, a Labour MP in north London. “The intelligence that police pick up on the ground isn’t really there.”
London’s newish chief of police, Cressida Dick, agrees with the mayor that the force should reverse the decline in the use of stop-and-search powers, which have been criticised for targeting ethnic minorities. She also wants knife crime to be regarded as a public-health issue, making it a priority for the health service and councils as well as the police. Such measures will come too late for Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, the 17-year-old who died on April 2nd. “To my baby Nesha,” her mother wrote on a note attached to flowers she left at the scene, “I’m gonna miss you so much.”