Yesterday we had the government telling us that recorded crime in the UK is at an all time low. Yesterday a  teenager was been stabbed to death outside a row of £1million homes  -  the 21st to be killed in London this year. Frederick Moody, 18, was ambushed close to a senior politician's house and left to die in front of his young sister. Witnesses claimed they had heard the killers shout 'leave him for dead' before fleeing the scene in Guildford Road, Stockwell on bicycles. A 16-year-old was arrested this morning in Brixton over the killing. I am sure that the Moody family will be joining in the government's celebrations...

In response to the vicious knife crime that is taking so many lives across the UK (and in London, most strikingly) the Government has promised a swift and comprehensive response to deal with it. So, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to about to unveil plans..... to shock young people who carry knives into a greater awareness of the impact of stabbing on victims. Her proposals include visits to hospitals where people are being treated for knife wounds.

Wow - that will REALLY sort the problem, won't it? I mean it's not as if those thugs who stab people, often in multiple slashes, figure that they will do severe damage, is it? Being taken to the hospital to visit the victims of knife wounds is going to really stop them from carrying blades, no doubt about it. Such illuminated wisdom from our wise and benevolent government.  What next - an image of a victim of knife crime on every knife purchased?

I think this is pathetic stuff from a useless government which is so WEAK on crime as to almost beyond parody. We HAVE the laws, we HAVE the police -- what is missing is the political resolution to punish. Labour, being good  card- carrying lefties, think that those who are prepared to stab fellow human beings to death can be reasoned with, dissuaded from their barbarity. I don't. I think they need severe punishment that will send a message to other putative knife users. This namby pamby approach by Jacqui Smith will be laughed at by the teenage thugs who think that they can carry knives and use them - and get away with it.

Remarkable.

"Their arrival in London is said to have led to a huge rise in thieving and prompted the creation of a specialist police squad to tackle their sinister activities.  Yet in a move which has caused disbelief amongst rank and file officers, Scotland Yard has asked staff to 'celebrate' the contribution of Roma gipsies to 'London's culture and diversity.' 

In a notice posted on the force's intranet website, Denise Milani, director of the Met's 'Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate', (Yes, that's how BAD it is folks) urges officers to observe the first ever 'Gipsy Roma Traveller History Month.' Ignoring the huge drain on resources caused by Romanian pickpockets who target commuters and tourists in the West End, Miss Milani  -  a protege of Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair  -  says Roma gipsies are welcome in the capital. She says: 'We welcome the celebration of the community's history and contributions to London's culture and diversity."

You couldn't make it up, could you? These hopeless diversity liberals such as Miss Milani are a scourge on policing.

Following on from my previous post, I bring to your attention to the news that 

... Hundreds of thousands of crooks could escape jail every year under the proposals by advisers to the Lord Chief Justice. Those sentenced to short, sharp shock jail terms of less than 12 months for “less serious offences” – including burglary – should be handed community penalties instead, they said. Even those who are likely to reoffend could walk free from court if it is believed they will go on to commit “non-serious offences”. And in a further blow, while courts must not be swayed by victims demanding harsher punishments for offenders, the advisers said that judges should listen if they call for leniency."

THAT is how rotten our Criminal Justice system has become - we are seeking to reduce crime by refusing to see it. Shocking.

I'm due on the BBC's Nolan Show just after 9am to discuss a new report which criticises the the treatment of prisoners at Northern Ireland's young offenders centre. Inspectors who visited the centre in November said it did not perform effectively against any of four tests used to assess conditions. They found that prisoners, including juveniles, were routinely strip-searched and unnecessarily handcuffed - and that there was a failure to investigate incidents of bullying. It quotes the example of one juvenile who was effectively confined to his cell for six weeks and denied a visit from his mother because of a minor row with a member of staff.

My heart bleeds for them. Listen, it's time we STOPPED obsessing about the criminals and focused instead on the needs of the victims of crime. These individuals have been convicted of committing crime - and they have been sent to this centre for punishment. It should not be a holiday camp. I could not care less if they find it difficult. In fact the MORE DIFFICULT they find it there the better. This might make them think twice before committing further crime. I also dispute the use of the word "children" to describe those inmates under 18.  If you are 16, you can join the army and serve your country. You can have sex, have children and claim welfare. Calling such young adults " children" is another liberal rhetorical device aimed at making us feel pity for them.  These young thugs are exactly that and liberal reports like this show how rotten our criminal justice system has become. The only way to prevent crime is to make sure that would be criminals realise they will be caught and they will be punished.

Talk to you all later...

Following on from Daphne's post on the unfortunate Mr Sydney Davis, here is another instance of really top notch British policing:

The man who handed himself in over the murders of two French students was told to wait in line at the reception of a south London police station.

The badly burned 33-year-old walked into Lewisham police station and apparently tried to confess that he was the man who had killed Gabriel Ferez and Laurent Bonomo, who were set on fire in their rented bedsit in New Cross in brutal scenes that have been compared to a Quentin Tarantino film. Laurent had been stabbed 196 times and Gabriel suffered 47 wounds.

But instead of calling for an officer to arrest him immediately, a civilian worker at the station asked the man to wait his turn. It has been claimed he was made to wait with other members of the public for at least five minutes and the Met is now investigating.

Lucy Downer, 27, who was sitting in the police station with the man while waiting to pay a motoring fine, said: "We were sitting on a row of seats when this skinny bloke walked in. He looked really out of it. His hands were bright red and his face was peeling badly. There were booths just to the right of the front door and he went into the first one and spoke with a reception officer.

"Then he came back out, sat down next to my cousin and started looking at her very strangely. I got a bit worried and changed places with her. Then this bloke got out a tub of antiseptic cream and rubbed it into his hands for the next few minutes.

"He then stood up, put his hands in the air and said, 'I've got third degree f***ing burns and they are not doing anything about it'."

Ms Downer said she asked the man to repeat what he had said and then mouthed the word "help" to a nearby policeman. She added: "The guy could have had second thoughts about giving himself up and scarpered at any point. He was off his head but he looked like he was very serious about what he said."

"It was very scary to be with him for several minutes because some jobsworth didn't think it was his turn in the queue."

Thankfully, the self-proclaimed murderer did not think better of his decision to turn himself in, and is now being questioned by police, following treatment for his injuries.

In one episode of The Simpsons, Police Chief Wiggum was confronted with a man who rushed into his office, covered in scorch marks and brandishing a lighter, and who proceeded to declare "I've just torched a building downtown and I'm afraid I'll do it again". To this he replied with a sarcastic "Yeah, right. I'll just type it up on my invisible typewriter". Apparently, the Wiggum family have relatives in England!

Yet another fine example of the emasculation of Great Britain. Try to protect your family with a stick of wood and get tossed in jail.  Have you people lost your collective minds?

For more than two years, Sydney Davis' house has been under siege from stone-throwing youths.

And more than two hours into the latest attack on his family home, the police had yet to respond.

So after a particularly large missile landed in his kitchen, the 65-year-old grabbed a plank of wood and ran towards the gang to scare them away.

But his desperate act came just as the police finally arrived on the scene - where they promptly arrested him for possession of an offensive weapon.

 He now faces up to six months in prison.

Poor Mr. Davis seems to have more common sense than the police department, here's what he had to say at the end of the article:

What in the world is this country coming to that the police arrest people like me for protecting their own property?

'The police say they want to reduce crime, yet they let evil little toe-rags like this off.

'Then they prosecute hard-working, upstanding residents like me. The law is, quite simply, a colossal ass.'

 Understatement of the year.

Not to make you Brits feel like total wimps, but here's what we do to real criminals in Texas, the actual perpetrators - not the victims like the Davis family, we sentence them to prison for 4,060 years.

Do you agree that anyone caught carrying a knife without a good excuse should expect to be sent to prison as Conservative Leader David Cameron says?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has argued that anyone over 16 caught with an illegal knife should be prosecuted, rather than escaping with a caution. But Mr Cameron says the presumption should go further - so anyone convicted of carrying a knife should be jailed.

I do not agree with Cameron and see this as a threat to liberty. Why should the possession of a knife automatically lead to imprisonment? Is this not a reactionary policy that could lead to all sorts of legal challenges? On this one, I rather agree with Mr Broon but I wonder what an "illegal" knife is? The most important thing here surely is to ensure that once a culprit is convicted they are given a sufficiently harsh sentence.

What SORT of justice do we have here in Britain where we can allow the following to happen?

A serial rapist murdered a young mother in front of her baby son just days after being bailed over another sex attack. Crack cocaine addict Christopher Braithwaite, 22, was arrested for a rape in August last year but was released the next day. He killed 23-year- old Stacey Westbury a week later.

The Old Bailey heard that Braithwaite, who had been at school with Stacey, sexually attacked her before killing her. Her father Ken found her body 18 hours later, with her face bloodied and bruised from repeated punches. She had been strangled and stabbed in the neck, stomach and right hand with a nine-inch blade.  Her son was still in his cot, while his mother’s body lay on the sofa yards away. After the killing, jobless Braithwaite had tried to wash the blood from Stacey’s naked corpse, before ransacking her flat trying to find anything he could sell for drugs.

This guy SHOULD face execution for this horrendous murder and those fools who determined that he could be set free so he could then carry out such an awful crime SACKED.

By way of Pub Philosopher I learn that at last.....there is to be a serious candidate standing against David Davis! 

Yesterday Jill Saward formally announced that she will stand in the byelection.

For those of you not familiar with Jill Saward, she was the dignified and brave victim of the horrific Ealing Vicarage Rape in 1986. 

Steve at PP recollects that horrific story and has included a link to the story outlining the gratuitous cruelty of the robbers who broke into the Ealing vicarage and the ridiculously lenient sentences handed out by the judge. In point of fact the judge made so light of Jills experience he was hammered by the press and public feeling and it threw a light on the general 'old boys' network legal approach to rape trials.

Regards her on this issue and to summarise c/o PP:

Jill Saward believes that the sacrifice of some civil liberties is necessary if crime is to be fought effectively. She supports the use of CCTV cameras to detect and deter criminals and advocates the extension of the national DNA database which, she argues, has been crucial to securing rape convictions.

So do I.  I agree with her statement that David Davis essentially wishes to drive a sledgehammer right through the tools the police the need to catch horrendous criminals in violent and other crime.

And so too does David Aaronvich. Before Mr Davis even emerged on the scene to speak on this issue  Aaronovich is on the money in this piece, outlining a slew of examples where the use of DNA evidence in tracing and convicting tricky to catch criminals is proven. He is coincidentally one journalist I do actually respect for speaking out over the last few years alongisde Nick Cohen on the Liberal Left sell out on Islamism.  

Happily Rupert Murdoch lost his nerve and pulled MacKenzie's funding. That horrendous foghorn leghorn looked to be a serious blight with his self righteous bluster on this important modern issue.

And The Greens have put up a candidate too. The only mainstream party to do so and I might point out to some hardcore civlibbers and so called 'libertarians' (when it suits) the only party to actually be standing for 'full liberties'!

I have mentioned in previous pretty involved back & forths on the subject that David Davis own cynical record on the detention issues until this year (amongst other liberty issues) makes his Magna Carta argument ring well and truly hollow. And it would appear the Greens have his number. So I assume those who have been so vocal here on individual liberties will now be backing the Greens??

 I also believe that in terms of standing up on principle Jill is by far and away the more sincere. I wish her the best of luck. I have never put forward money for a political cause in all my life but i will gladly send Jill money on this issue.  

Most important of all I am thrilled that the debate will now finally be brought into sharp focus rather than grandiose statements about the Magna Carta in 2008.

A mature, sensible, balanced and fair debate, presenting ALL the facts surrounding the use of technologies (in so far as CCTV DNA database are concerned) and on the balance we NEED to strike between civil liberties and protection from crime.  

Wonder what you make of the news that the government is examining ways to allow anonymous evidence in court cases, in the wake of this week's Law Lords ruling that defendants have a right to know who is in the witness box?

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he wanted to tackle the issue "urgently" to appease the high level of fear felt by witnesses. Senior police officers have admitted a string of convicted criminals could now appeal, after a double murder conviction was quashed because it relied too heavily upon anonymous evidence given at trial. Lord Bingham, who headed the panel of judges considering the case of Iain Davis, said a conviction would not have been achieved without anonymity but that "hampered the defence" in a way which was unlawful and rendered the trial unfair.

Do you think it is fair and reasonable that you could be convicted of any crime based on the evidence of someone you do not know and that do not see? Is there a danger that once the right to give evidence anonymously is secured, there is a real threat of abuse - including by the State itself? We need to safeguard our liberties and this is a government determined to erode these. 

Well, I agree with some of her observations but not many of her conclusions. I refer to the the new report issued by Louise Casey into the judicial system in England and Wales.

She says that the public should be told more about criminals so they no longer feel "cut off" from the justice system in England and Wales. I agree. But I don't want to know their life stories, I just want to know that justice is being done. 

Casey's review says the system is seen as "distant, unaccountable and unanswerable" - many do not know how to contact police in a non-emergency. Well, yes, but there are many who are very disappointed at the lack of response from the police IN an emergency. It is the effectiveness of the police that matters, period.

One idea she suggest is to make offenders serving community sentences more "visible". My problem is that I think community sentences are a waste of time. Whether they wear pink jumpsuits is beside the point. If they ARE going to do community services then by all means ensure they suffer indignity by the wearing of whatever.

Ms Casey also recommend many targets should be ditched with police focusing on the goal of making people feel safe. Not sure about this, surely the goal lies in preventing crime and then, if it still happens, catching the criminals!

The report also highlights the need for a "public commissioner on crime" to champion people's concerns within government, and a new performance target to measure public confidence in the system. Sorry but we do NOT need more quango positions and this is an invented job for some fatcat who can be relied upon to follow the line of his/her political masters.

She calls for more standardised powers for police community support officers.  Again, I think that it would be better to have ordinary coppers on the beat. These "community support officers" do not appear to be up to the job and what is wrong with ensuring that we have full-time constables on the cutting edge - on our streets?

There is no doubt that most ordinary people feel a disconnect from the criminal justice system. We  believe that our rights-obsessed society puts the needs of the criminals before those of their victims. I'm not sure we need new laws, we just need to enforce those already in place and start punishing those who break our laws. It's not rocket-science and the former "Respect" Czar is in many ways stating the bleeding obvious - after 12 months of a tax-payer funded jamboree. 

So, a man armed with a knife has attacked at least 14 people in central Tokyo. State television says two of the victims have died. The incident occurred in the Akihabara district, a shopping area known as Electric Town that is popular with young people and tourists. Five of the victims suffered cardiac arrest, a spokesman for the Tokyo Fire Department told AP news agency.

Shall we ban knives? No? Why so? If a similar incident to this had occurred in the USA, and a gun had been involved, the MSM would be full of indignant cries for a ban. Guns do not kill people. Knives do not kill people. It is PEOPLE who kill people. Crazy people, deranged people, evil people  -and banning the weapons they use will do little to prevent their crime.

Nisha Patel bled to death on the night of May 11, 2006, and until a few days ago her killing had seemed a clear-cut story of good and evil. She was extolled as the hardworking Asian special constable horribly murdered on the orders of her sleazy playboy husband; an adoring wife and brave officer, who served her community selflessly in suburban London. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair called her 'a real team player . . . her death is a huge loss'.

Her murder is still totally unacceptable BUT a different picture of WPC Nisha Patel is emerging.  The fact is that there is little doubt that she was involved with running a vice ring while serving as a special constable in the Met. Indeed, she habitually used her status as an officer to threaten creditors. She also threatened a businesswoman that she would be investigated on the police national computer. On top of all this, she was even fined £10,000 for tax evasion.

It's quite a charge sheet, and it seems extraordinary that the police allowed Nisha Patel to get away with such behaviour.  I wonder how it was that the Police overlooked her criminal record before admitting her to the force and then how did she get away with her vice ring activities? Do you think her ethnic status had anything to do with this failure to admit someone who was, by any definition, unsuitable to uphold the law? 

I was saddened to read that Pat Regan, 53, a lady who had become a powerful voice in the lobby against gun crime after her 26-year-old son, Danny, a drug dealer, was shot dead inside his fortified Merseyside home six years ago, has been murdered in her own house.

A life which had become defined by the fight against bloodshed in Britain's inner cities was ended early on Sunday when Mrs Regan, a mother of six, became the victim of a frenzied knife attack inside her maisonette in Hyde Park, a deprived area of Leeds. It was here that she had dedicated her time to educating young people on the dangers of gun and knife crime by visiting schools and helping bereaved families.

Her grandson has been arrested in connection with the killing. Unbelievable.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?

Those such as Mrs Regan have been abandoned by the political class and the police. 

I see that a teenage girl was stabbed to death yards from her front door as she returned from school yesterday. The 15-year-old, who was wearing her school uniform, died in the lift of her block of flats. Her body was discovered by a woman and her eight-year-old daughter on their way up to their own home. A man in his 30s has been arrested on suspicion of her murder.As the lift doors opened, they were met with the horrific sight of the teenager lying in a pool of blood. She had been stabbed up to ten times.

So far, so bad. Police have moved quickly to reassure the public in this area that this murder was NOT gang-related as so many others in London have been. It appears the man in his thirties may have been the 15 year old girl's boyfriend.

Reassured?