British Prime Minister Theresa May has called an emergency knife-crime summit to deal with the stabbing epidemic raging across the country. The announcement comes after 21 people were stabbed to death in London since the beginning of the year.
“We will only defeat the scourge of violence if we understand and address its complex root causes,” she said.
The UK police chief Sara Thornton called rising knife crime a “national emergency.” There were nearly 40,000 crimes involving knives in England and Wales between January and September 2018, the UK’s Office for National Statistics disclosed. The stabbing incidents were at the highest in a decade, since UK authorities started collecting relevant data.
May’s government is taking drastic measures to get law and order under control. The police have been granted an initial sum of £10 million to fund a “surge” of extra officers to combat knife crime across the UK, according to the newspaper reports.
Reuters reported British prime minister’s plans:
Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she will hold a special meeting on tackling Britain’s soaring knife-crime rate as she battles accusations that her government’s austerity policies are partly to blame.A wave of fatal stabbings has dominated headlines this week, displacing concerns about Britain’s exit from the European Union and fuelling criticism that May is neglecting other priorities during the Brexit negotiations.A former head of Britain’s biggest police force accused the prime minister of being personally responsible for the crisis because of her squeeze on police funding and a weakening of powers to stop and search suspects.Police officers described the situation as a national emergency and politicians pressed May during her weekly question session in parliament to explain whether she plans to reverse the funding squeeze on police.May, a former interior minister, said more must be done to tackle the causes of violence and promised to meet victims but declined to say whether there would be an increase in spending on police.
Richard Cooke, a senior police officer from West Midlands, urged the government to puts more cops “on the beat and empowers them to make robust use of stop-and-search powers.”
The Liberal British media was quick to pounce on the police for making such ‘offensive’ demands. “Knee-jerk demands for more police and stop-and-search won’t end knife crime,” the Daily Telegraph declared.
“Stop and search is deeply toxic, especially when people feel that they are being stopped because of their class or ethnicity, ” left-wing newspaper The Guardian said. “Our research suggests that it [stop-and-search] is a critical part of the social process whereby riots occur.” In a separate article, The Guardian accused the UK police of racism, claiming “[s]top and search is controversial because of a historic greater likelihood of use against black communities.”
The British and foreign news outlets focused on cuts in law enforcement funding and lack of police force on the UK streets while reporting the issue of knife crime — without mentioning the elephant in the room: mass migration. The recent surge in stabbing incidents in Europe is often linked to unregulated immigration from the Middle East and Arab North Africa. Last April, Germany’s national police trade union, the DPoLG, admitted that “young Arabs” were importing a culture of knife crime into the country.
No amount of policing can stem the tide of violent crime if Europe continues to import criminals in their droves through its open borders policy. With the March 29 deadline for Brexit approaching, the UK has a real chance of enforcing stricter immigration controls. However, going by PM May’s current performance as a negotiator, the UK’s woes may not come to an end anytime soon.
Video: Nigel Farage on UK knife crime
[Cover image via YouTube]
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