Tragic killings of teenagers in London used to urge greater police powers
By
Paul Mitchell
21 April 2018
The media, politicians and police are using the brutal murders of young teenagers in knife and gun crime attacks in London to restore police measures once routinely used to victimise working class, particularly black, communities. The most telling is the demand for greater powers to stop and search—along the lines of the “sus” (suspicion) laws that led to widespread resentment, rebellion and riots in the 1980s.
The heartfelt pleas of grieving mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who have seen young lives destroyed are being cynically exploited. The newspapers and airwaves are full of stories claiming the capital is overwhelmed by an epidemic of knife and gun crime organised by hordes of feral youth. Particular attention is directed towards “black-on-black” and gang-related crime.
Leading the pack was Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, which seized on the 15 murders in February (up from 8 in January) to proclaim that violence in the UK capital was now so bad that it had surpassed New York—where 11 homicides had taken place in the same month.
Other media outlets joined in the chorus, including London’s Evening Standard, whose new editor, George Osborne, has a major responsibility, as Conservative Chancellor from 2010 to 2016, for the drastic cuts that have plunged many of the capital’s youth into desperate straits.
Disgracefully, the Sunday Times report gave another opportunity to Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Commissioner Cressida Dick, who led the anti-terror operation that ended with the police murder of Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005, to call for more stop and searches—something she has pursued since being appointed in 2017. Dick announced…