People in Britain like to point out how relatively uncommon, if not to say unheard of, gun violence is in their country. What they tend to overlook is that you are far more likely to get a knife stuck in your ribs.
OK, that’s a bit of an overstatement. But here in Europe’s largest city they are cracking down on knives in a big way.
Last night, surfacing from the Angel Underground stop at around 8 p.m., I saw at the station’s entrance police hastily setting up portable metal detectors — two of them — through which they would choose people at random to walk.
Others seeing this might have been confused at first. But only the night before, walking through Leicester Square in London’s tourist-heavy West End, I came across the same kind of checkpoint: Two metal detectors right in the middle of one of the square’s thoroughfares, maybe eight police officers, and a line of mostly younger-looking night revelers who had all been stopped and told to walk the line, so to speak.
It was a seriously odd sight in the middle of the heavy flow of foot traffic, these detectors, surrounded as they were by the humming clubs, theaters and pubs of the district. It seemed almost funny. I stopped and asked an officer what was going on.
“Metal detectors,” he said.
“I can see that. But what are you looking for?”
“Knives.”
London is about three months into a massive initiative to curb a significant surge in knife violence this year, which has already claimed the lives of nearly 25 Londoners, mostly teens.
Just last night, a man was stabbed in the South London neighborhood of Brixton, and a youth was stabbed to death in east London.
Local surgeons here are telling newspapers that roughly one in three trauma patients they see these days are victims of a stabbing.
The Evening Standard recently did a survey of city hospitals and reports that there have been 424 patients treated for stab wounds this year, and calls roughly half of them serious cases. Royal London Hospital alone has seen 100 serious stabbing victims so far this year (compared to 71 this time last year). London’s Helicopter Emergency Service tells the Standard that it has treated 121 stabbing victims, of which 19 died on the scene. Medics say they’ve performed open heart surgery on 10 patients on London’s streets this year.
What’s going on?
Gang violence has been on the rise, and this being a decidedly antigun society (pretty much any gun is illegal here), knives are often the weapon of choice. That in turn drives others to carry knives on them for protection.
“A lot of people think that it’s better to be safe than sorry, and the only way they can be safe is maybe if I carry something, you know,” Londoner Leila Shire tells The Washington Post.
Out walking yesterday, I asked a few Londoners what was behind all these stabbings. Were the streets becoming unsafe? Some say yes, some say no.
“I wouldn’t say Londoners are that worried,” said a man named Harold Baker. “I think there is this feeling that these troubles are happening far removed from the center.”
“So, out of sight, out of mind?”
“You just asked whether I’m worried. I can’t say that I really am, no,” he said.
I put the same question to a woman who gave her name as Margaret and said she lived near Croydon — a decidedly doggier area of London — and had three children. “You just worry about kids,” she said. “No parent would want their children carrying weapons.”
Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June said teenagers as young as 16 caught carrying knives could face prosecution (the age used to be 18, and they usually first received a warning).
It’s unclear whether this metal detector and stop-and-search campaign has had much of an impact since revving up this past May. That month, police randomly sopped 4,200 youths and found 5 percent carrying knives, according to the Post. No recent data has been published.
Authorities say they are still letting most off with warnings. And police say overall knife crime countrywide has actually decreased 16 percent from last year (though London incidents look to be on the uptick), despite the fact that those involved in knife crimes these days increasingly turn out to be kids in their mid-teens, says the Post.