Knife Crime

Well I'm only away barely a week and all sorts go on.

So the government will solve knife crime by a multi million pound poster campaign? Well, that'll work.

I am fed up of people asking me what we're going to do about it. I normally now just simply turn the question round and ask what they think we should do. This usually provokes a bit of a bluster and one of two responses- "I don't know, just something", or an indignant "I don't know, its your job to figure it out".

Well, no. It's everyone's job. Especially parents. Especially government and local authorities who need to give schools the proper resources- and I don't mean posters- to speak to these kids who look like they're certain to end up through my custody suite doors. I have relatives in the education system and the potential to stop a lot of children and youths going feral is clearly there, but the government and the Daily Mail readership is only obsessed with the three R's to the exclusion of everything else. Difficult kids are invariably seen as a drain and a diversion of resources and it is rare to find a school (through no fault of their own) prepared to put the time and effort into these kids to stop them becoming one of my regular customers.

So what would I personally do? Well, nothing more than I do at the moment. Legislation is sufficient and is actually fairly common sense. To not quote exactly, to have a pointed or bladed article without lawful reason is the offence, but the lawful reason is not specified and is open to interpretation.

It's a cliche but it isn't the knife thats the problem, it's the person carrying it. I have on my kit belt a multi tool with not one but three blades that should I ever decide to use it that way would cause horrible injuries, and is easily strong enough to penetrate far enough to be fatal.

Carrying it on my kit belt at work is fine. I've used it for a number of things including fixing door frames and sawing the tops off plastic bottles.

Take it down the pub with me, different kettle of fish.

This may be controversial, but police don't need to do any more. We could search more people, but that'd need the removal of the reasonable grounds to suspect clause out of the search legislation. At the moment, when we find people with knives, or screwdrivers, or anything else in circumstances we find dubious, we bring them in.

They go to court- and herein lies the problem. What deterrent is a £50 fine. Spin a yarn about they forgot it was in the car door or they left it in their back pocket after fixing a loose screw and off you go. Unless you are daft enough to talk in interview how you planned on using it against anyone whether self defence or not you'll never get a punishment bigger than a big saturday booze up.

Knife crime is one of those things where prevention is far far better than the too-late time when we happen to search them. However, the government is ploughing money only into something visible and something people can see and talk about. Utterly unsurprising. Putting the money where it'd be useful won't have the instant, visible, talk-about-at-the-next-election results the government quite clearly crave.

Next post- what's this I hear about Chief Constables officially going against the government grain and binning sanction detection targets?

(Useful website I came across: http://www.knifecrimes.org/ )

Stop and Search- again

Barely had my fingers left the keyboard on my last missive about Stop and Search when its back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

So as a proportion of the population you are more likely to be searched if you're black. On the face of it, that seems worrisome.

But these statistics can only be the tip of the iceberg in what has to be a huge complex interlinked web of many different socio-economic-cultural factors. Why are more blacks per head of population in jail for instance. And to be in jail, that means convicted of an offence, so no issues about (un)reasonable grounds for search by officers.

Delving into this is far beyond me here. I could spend hours debating the availability of role models, challenges of peer pressure, gang culture, the impact of living in an urban or rural area (without spending time researching it, I believe the majority of ethnic minorities continue to reside in cities), how this and all the above link in relative economic depravation or wealth, etc etc.

For me, I still stand by what I said in my previous post. In my specific local area, there is a particular issue with reported street crime- robbery and mugging, and the suspects are predominantly black and to a lesser extent Asian youths- and consequently most stop searches are resultant from this, . However, my previous force area was a much more residential sector, where the principal problem was burglary and motor vehicle offences, for whom the suspects were predominantly white male youths (especially for the motor vehicle offences) and white adults.

So do I change the way I work or the way I expect my team to work as a result as a result of this research? No. I will just carry on the way I think best. Namely treat each case, each incident, each call on its own merits, and deal with it with the information I have and the powers available.

Just please don't call me racist. One of the few times I've nearly lost my rag with people over the years is when I've stopped a black male for doing a fairly blatant driving offence (red light, taking the mickey with speed limits etc) and I get that classic line "You're only stopping me because I'm black". The best one being someone at night doing 45 in a 30 in a car with blacked out windows. I couldn't tell whether it was a male or female driving, let alone any ethnicity. The only result I tend to find that particular comment brings is that the words of advice option quickly becomes less favoured and the pen is out on the FPN.

And before anyone says anything, I don't only stop black drivers. Unless you give me the finger or try and hide your face from me, I look at the state of the car first, manner of driving second and the looks of the driver a very distant and usually irrelevant third when it comes to deciding when to pull someone over. As it happens, as far as I can remember, every pursuit I've been has been a white driver.

And here's an afterthought- most of the people stop and searched are male. Does that make us institutionally sexist? Should an advisory group be formed to examine and direct us on this particular issue? Should groups like Fathers4Justice or Presidents of Working Men's Clubs be asked to comment on this male bias? I feel the media have missed an opportunity to criticise, sorry I mean highlight an issue to debate, here.

Stop and Search

What a rare hullabaloo going on in the press at the moment.

It is such a touchy subject. Take a look at this old report from Devon & Cornwall. An increase of 40 stops over a year- to 146 out of a total 13500 (i.e. 0.01%). I agree with the chief, who sounds a bit bewildered when he asks what is all the fuss about when there were 40 extra searches across the entire two counties over the whole year. But look at the Race Equality Council- demanding to have an explanation for the increase from 0.007% to 0.01%, and demanding to know what the police are going to about it.

So Keith Jarrett has opened a rare old can of worms, asking that more youths should be stop searched. Predictably Ch Supt Dizeai has his oar in already, disagreeing, despite the fact Mr Jarrett is asking more youths be searched, not black or white youths, but the race element is instantly brought into it because he is president of the NBPA.

Now here's my take on it. Personally, I agree with Mr Jarrett. In my specific localised area the majority of robbery and street crime takes place with youth offenders and youth victims. I am not mentioning anything about their ethnicity because it isn't relevant. Often, these robberies are "knife-enabled" (to use the management speak) and occasionally gun-enabled (whether real, imitation, or whatever). And sometimes, people get hurt.

However, the only time my officers feel safe in conducting searches is after an event, i.e. when someone has called us to say there's been a robbery, or they've seen someone with a knife, as they then feel they have the grounds to search people matching that description. So most of the searches undertaken are effectively already too late- the robbery has already happened, someone has already been threatened with a knife. Occasionally we are lucky and get the right person.

Because with the level of scrutiny stop searches get, my officers generally don't feel 'safe' unless they have rock solid grounds to suspect someone of carrying something. A group of youths hanging around eyeing up passers by? Not enough, according to the guidelines we have to follow. Even if you recognise someone from having previously arrested them for carrying a knife, still not enough. I've seen the complaints upheld for things just like that. I have to supervise every one of their stop slips to ensure they do have reasonable grounds, because I'll get in the smelly stuff if I let slide.

Its one of those things where we could be certain a particular bunch of people are carrying something, but we know and they know unless we can point to something objective giving us that suspicion, we haven't got a legal leg to stand on.

Stop search could be one of the most effective preventative tools we have. But because of the requirements for us to have these reasonable grounds to suspect something, we are not able to be as effective as we otherwise could be.

I know the reason for this- accountability and justification. I'm not debating whether the legal side is right or wrong here, just pointing out we can't have it both ways.