Ordinary Americans allocated donations for President Donald Trump’s promised border wall with Mexico. However, his former chief strategist and campaign chair Steve Bannon is accused of diverting $1 million to his own account. Three other individuals are also accused of having enriched themselves in the scheme.

What Did Bannon Allegedly Do?

Bannon, the former head of Donald Trump’s campaign and later chief strategist in the White House was arrested on Thursday for fraud. He and three accomplices, who were also arrested on Thursday, allegedly embezzled more than one million dollars that ordinary Americans had donated to build a wall on the border with Mexico. The charges are according to indictments from a New York state attorney.

Prosecutors believe that Bannon was the head of the plot. They allege that he helped launch a fundraising campaign in 2018, calling on Trump supporters to donate money to build the wall. The face of the “We Build The Wall” campaign was Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, who was seriously wounded in Iraq in 2004 and is one of the four men arrested.

According to the indictment, the hundreds of thousands of donors were led to believe that every cent would flow into a border wall. Trump initially promised its construction during his presidential campaign and in the early years of his presidency, however, he failed to secure sufficient funds from Congress.

More Than $25 Million Was Crowdfunded to Build the Wall

More than $ 25 million was raised for the project, which Trump claims to date that Mexico will bear the costs. However, Bannon is now accused of having diverted more than a=one million dollars into his own accounts and also ensured that hundreds of thousands of dollars were forwarded to Kolfage in order to finance his luxury life, the indictment claims.

In turn, Bannon allegedly utilized the money for “personal expenses” of several hundred thousand dollars. Half a year after the fundraising began in December 2018, “We Build The Wall” utilized part of the money to build a steel fence about one kilometer long on private land near the Texas border city of El Paso.

Involvement of the US Postal Service

The New York Postal Inspector was also involved in the investigation that led to the arrests and charges. According to him, the defendants forged receipts and other documents to cover up the embezzlement. When scammers use the US Federal Post Office, their crime is a case for federal prosecutors. In addition to Bannon and Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea have also been charged.

Bannon is considered the architect of Trump’s election victory, following which he came to the White House as chief strategist. Within months he fell out with Trump and left the White House.

The Trump Admin Stays Quiet

In response to Bannon’s arrest, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany stated on Thursday that the president had not had any contact with Bannon since then.

Last year, Bannon concentrated on networking European right-wing populists with one another to bring his fight against the “Class of Davos” to Europe and contribute to the dissolution of the European Union. However, in the end, he had little influence on the outcome of the European elections or any increased cooperation of the Eurosceptic parties.

Bannon Pleads Not Guilty

Bannon has already pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges in a New York court. Judge Stewart Aaron ruled Thursday that Bannon would be released on bail of five million dollars. Of this, Trump’s ex-advisor has to deposit $1.75 million as security. Aaron also imposed a travel ban for areas outside of the northeastern United States and Bannon has to hand in his passport.

While Bannon remains innocent until proven guilty, it appears that Bannon’s shtick of being the last line of defense between the “elites” and hardworking Americans may well have been exposed. This footage of him joking about stealing the border wall money certainly won’t increase his chances of a favorable outcome to the situation.

L'articolo Trump’s Former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Arrested proviene da InsideOver.

America is on fire. Many urban areas have been overrun by protests that have turned violent along with looting, arson, assault and property damage to vehicles, businesses and infrastructure. Riots first broke out May 25 following the death of 46-year-old George Floyd, a black man who was pinned down to the ground by white Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin for 8 minutes and 46 seconds after having been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill in a nearby pharmacy.

The Current Situation

Rioting in Minneapolis has now ceased, but cities across the United States are ablaze and crammed with protesters, agitators and looters from Philadelphia and New York to Portland and Salt Lake City, with one man shot dead in Louisville, Kentucky and various reports and footage of attacks on police, and tense police driving through protesters and tasing a young black couple in their vehicle. Burning city halls and streets littered with burned-out husks of vehicles have dotted the evening news for the past week. The US National Guard was called in by a number of states this weekend and there were around 5,000 arrests made by police. There are charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter against Chauvin who was fired on May 26 along with attending officers Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and Alexander Kuen. Floyd’s family’s lawyer calls the death an act of “premeditated murder.”

This is Not a Drill

In the 2004 film Man on Fire, Denzel Washington plays a former special forces operator called John Creasy who vows to get revenge on criminals who committed an atrocity against the family he was being paid to keep safe. In 2020 America on Fire — which is not a movie — a mass of people of many grievances and agendas are being driven by blind rage at the system. They are smashing the commercial structures that no longer employ 40 million Americans and opposing the police who they associate with racist violence and brutality. There are various groups involved in the ongoing unrest in the United States, despite the attempts by various media and political sides to frame the current situation simplistically. As Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept noted, “lots of people apparently want to condemn the protests and maybe even crush them but only after they’ve labelled them as having been corrupted by some ideological group they’re more comfortable posturing in opposition against.”

A Note on Narrative Building

Political talking points and narratives are constructed constantly, especially surrounding controversial and chaotic events that leave the public wanting straightforward answers. This fits well into politicians plotting how to exploit tragedy for political leverage. Almost immediately the Trump Administration and key supporters latched onto the idea of spoiled white agitators in “antifa” and well-funded hard-left agitators being behind the main acts of violence and instigating the destruction, tying into longstanding theories about George Soros and leftist oligarchs being behind attempts to destroy the United States and collapse the Trump government. Antifa, or “anti-fascist” is a loose umbrella of socialist, communist and anti-capitalist groups with roots in Stalinism.

Liberals, meanwhile, became disillusioned by the destruction and also sought a group to blame that would fit more neatly with their ideological proclivities. After all, communists and antifa have long made it clear that “liberals get the bullet too” and that kind of militancy isn’t exactly reassuring to Sally Soccer Mom in surburban St. Paul, and neither is the idea that a group they sympathize with — namely black people facing discrimination and economic abandonment that is egged on by jackal media and political operators — could also have numerous members of their community who would commit violence and property destruction.

Is Antifa Really Behind This?

The simple truth is that despite obvious instigators and hard-left groups the violence is mainly being driven by people who are angry over the death of George Floyd, poverty and police brutality and boosted along by a some determinedly menacing pencil-armed neo-Marxist white kids with too much time on their hands. The attempt to pin this all on antifa and the claim that they are going to be categorized as a terrorist organization is clearly based on political expediency rather than a pragmatic countermeasure. As Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller put it, “Antifa is terrible and all, but my guess is they’re responsible for a small fraction of the violence and looting going on.”

What About the Racists?

For their part, some suburban liberals found a new scapegoat in the white nationalist bogeyman: this upheaval was somehow a plot to make black people look bad by white racists and Russian agents. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, Governor Tim Walz and others promoted the idea that most of those damaging the state were from elsewhere, which turned out not to be true. Ellison has previously promoted antifa and was formerly a member of the black nationalist Nation of Islam which has long called for black separatism and violent resistance of the white-dominated societal structure.

To be sure, there is a contingent of peaceful protesters and concerned citizens, along with a smattering of hard left communists and antifa and several riot-curious far right accelerationists and white nationalists, but this last number is miniscule as far as the evidence goes. Despite bizarre attempts by some in the mainstream media to claim the majority of damage is being done by white nationalists, racists and Russian-linked provocateurs trying to accelerate the downfall of modern, multi-racial America by striking at its fault-lines, there is no proof of more than a few white nationalists, militias and Trump supporters working their way into the upheaval. There is seemingly no end to blaming Vladimir Putin for everything that happens in the United States, which is, arguably, one of the ongoing political and media delusions and deflections that has led to this violent moment.

Fox News has been chased down and insulted by mobs, several Trump supporters were surrounded and pushed back to a building with one having his Trump hat burned as the crowd screamed “F*** Trump!” and several white nationalists who did try to infiltrate a protests were tracked and then turned into a bogeyman by antifa and left groups who claim these people are everywhere. Apart from Nick Fuentes and some “boogaloo” types popping up for photo opportunities, the violence does not appear to be orchestrated by these young internet racists. It is particularly odd to see the media blaming Trump for the vandalizing of CNN headquarters in Atlanta, for example, when this was done by a crowd who clearly despises the President and his supporters as well as CNN and mainstream media.

Where’d All the Good People Go?

There are still plenty of good people. Some protesters have restrained and delivered violent agitators to police and others have done their best to stand up to violent looters and agitators. But at the end of the day what is happening in America’s cities is a social problem more than anything else. Trust has broken down and year by year Western civilization is reverting into Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature: every man and women for themselves.

The bottom line here is simple: American society is breaking down. Look for rural communities to increasingly fortify themselves against the cities, protecting their food sources, businesses and streets from outsiders through force of arms and even vigilante patrols. There is plenty of blame to go around and deep-seated problems to reference, however now the situation truly is spiraling out of control. The United States is well on the road to becoming a failed state. Economic meltdown, the COVID-19 pandemic that is still decimating the country and an enraged uprising have come together to form the perfect storm.

Certainly, economic, racial and political aspects have all had a major role in leading to this situation, but at the end of the day the sound you hear is the social fabric tearing apart from Houston to Los Angeles. It’s the frustration boiling over, and whichever agendas and extreme groups may try to use that frustration for their own purposes it would be a mistake to think that the situation itself is entirely engineered or delusional. After all, the media and many politicians continually trying to place the motivation for unrest and problems on anything other than the actual causes of those problems is a big reason why we are in this position today.

Whatever exactly is going on, Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker put it aptly in noting that “you know we’re in uncharted territory when something happens in Minneapolis and they’re setting cars on fire in Salt Lake City.”

L'articolo America on Fire proviene da InsideOver.

South Africa is having a gold problem, and it’s not a shortage or excess, but rather gangs who carry out ‘gold raids.’ The groups loot mines and smelt houses, and even take hostages, Engineering News & Mining Weekly reported.

Higher Prices Draw More Gangsters

Gold prices are at record highs, making mining operations prime targets for bandits. In 2019, Minerals Council South Africa reported 19 armed raids, up from 10 the previous year.

“These incidents are almost always associated with intimidation and physical abuse of staff and contractors, and have also included hostage taking,” read a report from the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation. Last year, two fatalities were recorded.

The bandits are typically armed to the teeth with AK-47 and R6 assault rifles, moving in groups of 15 or 20 raiders. In December, a raiding party target Gold Fields Ltd.’s South Deep mine and made off with $500.000 worth of stolen goods. 

South Africa’s Government is Failing to Act

The problem is two-fold, caused first in part by the soaring price of gold. Another factor is the lack of a proper government response. Under former President Jacob Zuma corruption, bribery, and crime became commonplace even with the ranks of government officials. Eventually, honest law enforcement authorities gave up, as Bloomberg reported.

“Mining companies are being attacked by thugs and armed gangs and there is a lack of police response,” said Neal Froneman, chief executive officer of Sibanye Gold Ltd, the nation’s largest producer, which was also the target of a failed raid in January. “It eventually has a knock-on impact into society: it’s lawlessness, it’s anarchy,” Froneman added.

South Africa’s Horrific Overall Crime Stats

The anarchy plaguing the South African gold industry is reflective of society overall. The state’s murder rate is at a 10-year high and crime is up across the board, therefore it is easy to imagine robbers taking advantage of a lucrative honeypot like gold miners.

“The fundamental problem is police are not getting on top of organized violent crimes,” said Gareth Newham, head of the justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. “We are seeing a deterioration in our policing capacity.”

At an administrative level, police and courts were thinned under Zuma’s administration. As a result, the government simply does not have the manpower or resources to get a handle on its gold problem.

Zuma’s Government Weighs Possible Task Force

Minister of Police Bheki Cele met with industry representatives in October and discussed plans to create a task force to focus on violence targeting the gold industry.

Gold companies have also tried to increase their security details, both in number and in training. Guards for Sibanye now undergo combat training and have armored vehicles. But they are often outmatched by the gangs who wield automatic weapons and don’t hesitate to use them.

“It’s military precision in terms of planning and execution,” said Nash Lutchman, head of security for Sibanye. “No smelting plant is going to have sufficient manpower and fire power to defend an onslaught from 20 or 30 attackers.”

The Gold Raids are Hurting South Africa’s Economy

The crimes aren’t only hurting gold companies, but also the South African economy in general, notably investment opportunities, said Minerals Council CEO Roger Baxter. If the government can’t protect can’t protect the industry, it sends a telling signal to other foreign businesses that may consider doing business there. Any business should look to be profitable and profit is a beacon to gangsters who are better equipped than the police.

“The lack of resources and capacity within the SA Police Service to prevent these violent assaults, which are largely driven by organized crime, is a major threat to the industry and places the lives of innocent people at risk,” Bader said.

“The impact of illegal mining and product theft on the industry and the country has risen to unprecedented levels and costs the country significantly,” he continued. “The mining industry is under siege and this detracts from production, employment and investment.”

What’s the Next Step to Stop the Lawlessness?

While companies continue to staff more security details on their own, the Mineral Council is also optimistic that the government might finally take action. President Cyril Ramaphosa also addressed the problem more broadly in his State of the Nation Address this year. He plans to create special law enforcement divisions to counter the gold gangs. Although he referred to “construction and other businesses,” it’s a good bet to infer he was speaking to the gold industry. 

The problem is not new and the government is not ignoring it, as indicated by Cele’s meeting and Ramaphosa’s address. While it is understandably a top priority for gold companies, it remains to be seen how the government will prioritize it among a global economic crisis and the current coronavirus outbreak. 

L'articolo Military-Style Gangs Terrorize South African Gold Industry proviene da InsideOver.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is asking the United States to “reconsider its decision” to grant immunity to Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American diplomat. Sacoolas fled the UK after accidentally killing a British teenager this August.

According to police, Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road after leaving the British RAF base Croughton on August 27 when she hit and killed 19-year-old Harry Dunn, who was driving his motorcycle in the opposite direction. Boris Johnson and other members of the British government want Sacoolas to return to the UK and come in for further questioning regarding the incident.

Sacoolas complied with authorities at first after the incident but went on to claim diplomatic immunity – specially granted outside of London to diplomats and their families based at RAF Croughton under a 1994 agreement—and subsequently left the UK under the advice of the US embassy in the UK. The embassy has confirmed the family involved in the August 27 “traffic accident” has left the country and expressed its “deepest sympathies.”

RAF Croughton is leased out to the US government and about 30 per cent of all US military communications in Europe go through it. Certain locations outside London do still get diplomatic immunity for diplomats and their families.

Sacoolas had been in the UK less than a month when the incident occurred, and her children were attending the expensive and prestigious Winchester House private school, where Dunn’s father Tim worked as a maintenance man. Radd Seiger, a lawyer for the Dunn family claims that Sacoolas’ husband Jonathan was a spy stationed at RAF Croughton and added that “it is, I guess, why it has been handled in the way that it has.”

Sacoolas’ identity was just recently revealed. Johnson said he is bringing the issue forward to the American ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson. If he gets no results, Boris Johnson said he will bring the matter directly to the White House. Downing Street has called the matter “extremely concerning.”

“I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose,” Boris Johnson said, adding “I hope Anne Sacoolas will come back and will engage properly with the processes of law that are carried out in this country.”

Dunn’s family is understandably distraught and outraged, pointing out that their son was obeying all the rules of the road at the time of the accident and “was riding perfectly safely that night.” Harry’s father Tim says they are “disgusted, appaled, how she could be having this cloak wrapped around her.” Harry’s parents are incredulous that Sacoolas can live with herself and is so far being allowed to “evade justice.” Harry’s mother Charlotte adds that Sacoolas “must return to the UK to face justice” and failure to do so “would set a terrible precedent.” Charlotte further says police have camera footage that shows Sacoolas pulling out of the base on the wrong side of the road directly into Harry.

Diplomatic immunity is rarely withdrawn by the United States. In the UK diplomatic immunity applies to any foreign diplomats working in the UK and bars UK authorities from entering foreign diplomatic property, which is what allowed Julian Assange to stay for seven years in the embassy of Ecuador in London. According to the Vienna Convention that gives diplomatic immunity in the UK diplomats have a “duty” to obey laws, but they still have the privilege of not facing prosecution if they fail to do so, so it seems rather a tautology. US diplomats were revealed in 2016 as the biggest holders of unpaid traffic and congestion charges in London, with over 10 million British pounds in unpaid penalties.

Although the reasons for maintaining strict protections around diplomatic immunity do have some justifications, the Sacoolas case reveals the various shortcomings and hypocrisies that can be involved. In addition to being a tense point right now in British-American relations, the case brings up stark class division, with the wealthy Sacoolas family able to skate away on their privilege as the working-class Dunn family is left grieving for their dead son. The most corrupt nations in the world are often infamous for untrustworthy authorities and dirty oligarchs who can pay off the law and get away with crimes and accidents with complete impunity. It would be a shame if nations like the United States and the UK became increasingly known for similar reasons.

L'articolo Diplomatic Immunity Under Scrutiny After US Diplomat’s Wife Flees UK proviene da InsideOver.

In recent weeks, a gripping story has seeped out of Barcelona’s sweltering subway system. Its heroes are a group of vigilantes clad in sports clothes, have-a-go heroes hunting the pickpockets who pilfer from unsuspecting tourists. The story paints a vivid picture of a city on the edge, whose politicians can no longer be trusted to protect their people.

These vigilantes have been patrolling the underground network for a decade, picking off the thieves in relative obscurity. But they’ve finally been dragged out of the shadows by Barcelona’s security crisis, which shows no sign of abating. With over 25 crimes being committed every hour, a city renowned for its golden serenity is now being portrayed as a melting pot of crime and unrest.

In a desperate attempt to seize the narrative, Barcelona’s politicians have finally announced a crackdown. But no-one seems particularly convinced it will make any difference.

Boiling point

The Catalan capital has always had its shadier areas, of course. The multicultural barrio of Raval, popular with boozy tourists, has long attracted police scrutiny for its ethnic tensions. But Barcelona has never had no-go zones, places that visitors are warned to avoid at all costs. Over recent months, however, things have turned decidedly ugly.

Seven people have been murdered since the start of summer, the latest a 26-year-old man who was stabbed at a disco in the Port Olimpic neighbourhood last week, after a dispute over a stolen mobile phone. As if these bloody feuds weren’t bad enough for the city’s reputation, the brutal attacks on two foreign diplomats – one of which proved fatal – have generated uncomfortable headlines around the world. The latest reports show that robberies are up 30%, and at least one sexual assault is committed every day. Street scuffles are now so common that no-one can keep count. 

As the people of Barcelona search for scapegoats, the spotlight has fallen on two prominent figures. One is the regional interior minister Miquel Buch, reviled by local security forces for failing to give them adequate resources. The other is Barcelona’s left-wing mayor Ada Colau, who stands accused of denuding local security forces and allowing criminals to act with impunity. Colau continues to claim that Barcelona is among the most secure cities in the world, but her opponents accuse her creating “disaster and chaos.”

Now, finally, it appears the politicians are ready to act. A new plan, backed by Buch and Colau, is in the works. Headlined Barcelona Secure City, it promises hundreds of new police units as well as a brand-new command centre near the central Placa Catalunya neighbourhood, which will allow the two primary police forces – the municipal Guardia Urbana and the regional Mossos d’Esquadra – to liaise with one another. The plan’s working committee has also demanded the modification of the Spanish penal code to ensure that repeat thieves face jail time, rather than fines.

Cynical response

However, many remain unconvinced. The plan won’t be finalized for several weeks, but already the unions of both the Guardia Urbana and Mossos d’Esquadra have spoken out in condemnation, saying they don’t have the resources to provide the increased security presence.

A spokesperson for the Mossos union, Uspac, told InsideOver that Buch and his fellow politicians are guilty of “neglect” in the way they have allowed the security situation to escalate, and pointed out that Mossos officers are paid less for over-time than for regular hours – a situation which makes many reluctant to work the extra shifts that will be necessary under the plan.

“If they want to put extra officers in one area, they’ll have to take them from another,” the spokesperson said. “We don’t think that’s the best way forward.”  

The reaction from the Guardia Urbana’s union, Sapol, was even more emphatic. Their spokesperson told us that Colau and her allies have “tried to dismantle our control structure”, removing judicial assistance from the officers while giving it to those arrested, and accused them of running a campaign of “persecution” against the agency which has allowed mafias to insinuate themselves.

Just like the Mossos, the Guardia Urbana believes that “you can’t take officers from one place and put them in another — if you do that, the problem will get even bigger.” The problem will only be solved, the spokesperson says, by paying the officers properly and giving them the necessary support to run a 24-hour service.

“We’ll carry on”

Perhaps the most troubling reaction of all comes from the vigilantes, the ones who’ve been patrolling the underground for years and have risen to stardom at the worst possible time for Barcelona’s leaders.

The group’s figurehead is Eliana Guerrero, who has been running the patrols since the beginning. She told InsideOver that Barcelona’s security situation will only be resolved if the authorities are willing to take proper action – something which she believes they have no intention of doing.

“They’re going to do a quick fix,” Guerrero said. “They’ll rush through, like we’ve seen before [with previous legislative changes]. They’re going to muddle through with a botched job, a patch-up, and it’ll be a case of ‘ok, we’ve fixed everything.’ It won’t be the case.”

Although Guerrero is a leftist herself, she told us that Colau and her supporters have allowed their ideology to blur their approach to administration.  

“They see the police as the enemy, and there’s certainly resentment from the law enforcement bodies. And we’ve seen her give plenty of scope to certain groups – yes they are human beings and we have to find solutions, but you can’t give them so much free rein that things spiral out of control, as we’re seeing now.”

In light of the recent response the vigilantes have received, the politicians would doubtless love them to stop their patrols. However, Guerrero told us she had no intention of calling a halt, vowing “to keep undertaking these patrols until I see a real change.”

No doubt the politicians will continue their charm offensive over the coming weeks, before their security blueprint is finally ready for roll-out. They’ll make further lavish promises of increased security, better coordination, and a clean-up of those now-infamous no-go areas.

But for now, at least, Barcelona continues to simmer. The frenzied summer tourist season may be drawing to a close, but few people believe things will cool down any time soon.

L'articolo Barcelona Crisis And The Clash Between Politicians And Vigilantes proviene da InsideOver.

Police figures from England show a 73% rise over five years in women and girls being charged with “possession offences” as a result of carrying knives.

These figures fit in with an overall rise in knife crime throughout the UK that sees knife and offensive weapon offences in England and Wales up 8% on last year. The overall numbers – 22,041 offences recorded between March 2018/19 – are the highest that they have been in almost a decade. Possession offences include illegal possession and threatening with a blade, but not murders or assaults that involve knives.

While knife crime in the UK is typically male-dominated, the escalation in female knife offences is still a country-wide concern. Recorded offences are up 52% in London, 54% in Merseyside, 82% in South Yorkshire and twice as many incidents recorded in Greater Manchester between 2014 and 2018. There are also concerns about the young age of female offenders in the police figures. Almost a quarter of female offenders were found to be under 18, with the youngest female offender only seven years old.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme, MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Knife Crime, Sarah Jones, said:

“What we suspect is that it is much the same as sexual exploitation, that girls are groomed into gangs through praise, through friendship, through offers of protection, through asking people to run errands.

“The same kind of patterns you see girls being pulled into sexual exploitation apply to criminal networks. They end up carrying knives and getting involved in crime.”

Additionally, she said, gangs often believe young girls to be useful for criminal operations as they are less likely to be seen as suspicious and stopped by police. A 2019 report from The Children’s Society found that children under ten – the age of criminal responsibility in Britain – may be of particular interest to gangs ferrying drugs from cities to rural customers. These operations, known as “county lines”, are thought to generate £1.8 billion annual profit in the UK and rely on dealers in city centres using young and vulnerable people to transport drugs to the countryside. The National Crime Agency reported a 40% rise in county line operations in the past year, reflecting the national rise in knife crime offences.

Austerity cuts in policing, mental health care and youth services have been widely credited with the overall rise in knife crime figures among men and women. Other reasons for the increase in female offenders are complex. “There are a number of interrelated factors at play,” a spokesperson from St Giles Trust, a charity supporting ex-offenders, told The Guardian. “These include cuts to vital support services, domestic abuse, the role of the drugs trade and the exploitation of vulnerable people that goes with it, school exclusions and the need for many young people – young women in particular – to feel a sense of belonging.”

The UK government, now under Boris Johnson’s leadership, has pledged to tackle knife crime by increasing police powers. Stop and search powers have been expanded, granting police officers the right to search anyone, even without “reasonable suspicion” that they intend to cause violence. But critics have argued that this will do little to address the root causes of knife crime, and may even worsen relations between police officers and the communities they serve.

“This will not only consume police time and erode trust in the police, but have little impact in actually preventing people carrying knives. What we really need is more community police officers to build trust, turn young people away from crime, and target stop and searches on those who do carry knives,” said Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Ed Davey.

Meanwhile, St Giles Trust says solutions for female knife crime lie outside the criminal justice system. “Support needs to be put in place to help identify vulnerable young women who are at risk and give them the help they need to access positive opportunities, build their self-esteem, recognise healthy relationships and build their resilience.”

L'articolo The Rise in Women and Girls Carrying Knives in England proviene da InsideOver.

Steve Narvaez Jara hoped to be a pilot one day. Instead, he was stabbed to death outside an East London flat. He had been studying physics and aerospace and, at just 20-years-old, had everything to look forward to . Jara was one of four young London men knifed within 15 hours of each other, and with only 206 minutes on the clock, the first victim of 2018. It was the heartbreaking start of a blood-soaked year in the British capital.

Homicides accounted for 134 deaths in London in 2018, the highest recorded in a decade. For the first time in history, London outstripped the turbulent streets of New York in the murder stakes. A lethal combination of knife ownership and youth culture seemed to drive the frenzy – at least half the killings involved a blade, with a third of victims under the age of 24. The city’s mayor Sadiq Khan blamed police cuts, branding the violence a “scourge that left families and communities devastated”.

But the UK’s knife problem reaches well beyond the capital. With 285 recorded in the year to March 2018, fatal stabbings across England and Wales have now hit their highest ever level. Birmingham, the country’s second largest city, suffered three teenage knife crime fatalities in just twelve days in February 2019. In the East Midlands, trauma centres recorded a fifty percent increase in child resuscitation between 2017 and 2018. Each of the 28 youngsters had been stabbed.

Such figures fail to tell the human story, though. “Every killing is heartbreaking – a human being with hopes, loves and aspirations,” says Dr Junior Smart of the St Giles Trust, an anti-violence charity that operates in hospitals. “It is simply wrong for a parent to bury their child from such violence.”

This burgeoning knife crime puts an immense pressure on the health service. Just shy of 5,000 hospital admissions were for blade related injuries according to recent statistics, consuming medical resources at a furious rate. Essential patient care is falling through the cracks, says Professor Chris Moran, England’s national clinical director for trauma, while expert staff struggle to hold back the tide of stabbings.

It’s a problem that can’t be solved in the emergency rooms. “Far too many young people are able to buy knives on the high street,” argues Moran, so it’s there, in the community, that the crisis must be addressed. The Government is funneling money into early intervention schemes – some £220 million over the coming years – geared toward preventing youngsters stepping onto the street armed with a blade. The projects will work with children at risk of criminal involvement, steering them towards community groups and away from gang exploitation.

But for some, this longer-term approach comes at the expense of immediate, hard-headed policing. Sir Denis O’Connor, former assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, lambasted the Government’s strategy as “silent on deterrence”, arguing that it’s “more concerned with its narrative and less with action”. To counter such criticism, ministers have launched new crime prevention orders that can be imposed on suspected knife carriers as young as 12. Curfews, social media restrictions and violence awareness courses can all be enforced, with potential jail time for those found in breach.

One issue however, is quoted time-and-again by those on the front line of law enforcement: police numbers. In the decade it took knife crime offences to reach their record high, the number of officers fell by 20,000. For the most seasoned cops, this is a parallel that can’t be ignored. When Prime Minister Theresa May dismissed a correlation between knife crime and police numbers, the UK’s most senior officer, Commissioner Cressida Dick, asserted there was “of course” a link between violent crime and the availability of officers. The cash needed to rectify this and address the spiralling knife crime crisis is between £200m and £300m, she and her colleagues said. They got half of that.

The money, £100m promised by the Government’s finance ministry, will go to police precincts where violence is highest. Police funding has fallen by almost one-fifth in recent years, again shadowing the rise in knife related murder. For London’s Sadiq Khan, the extra money amounts to “a drop in the ocean”.

But the financial boost has been mostly welcomed among police ranks. The National Police Chiefs Council said it would help pump up numbers of officers patrolling crime hotspots and allow for nationwide training in anti-knife crime practice, including test purchasing blades from suspect shops and educating youngsters in the dangers of carrying.

Perhaps most hopeful though, is the money being channeled into so-called ‘Violence Reduction Units’ (VRU). Modelled on a groundbreaking approach used in Glasgow, Scotland – once Europe’s murder capital – the scheme has a simple principle: violence is preventable, not inevitable. In conjunction with beefing up conventional policing tactics (more stop-and-search, lengthier prison sentences etc.) the VRU adopted a public health approach to violent crime.

Much of the brutality was meted out in the Scottish city’s poorest, most drug addled neighbourhoods. Noting this, police began treating the violence as a symptom of a disease: social deprivation. Addressing the root causes at the very earliest opportunity became the unit’s mission. Victims of violence were approached in hospital and offered counselling and refuge, hoping to steer them away from a path of retribution. Those serving time for violence were channelled toward social work, education and employment programmes.

In the eleven years since VRU’s inception, the number of people admitted to Glasgow’s hospitals for stab wounds fell by 65%. Homicides in the city fell by half over the same period. It’s little wonder that replica schemes are springing up across the UK.

Huge issues face the fledgling VRUs and other knife crime prevention programmes, though. While public confidence in the police continues to grow, Britain’s black population remains less trustful of law enforcement. In London, officers are four times more likely to use force against black people than white. Young black men are disproportionately singled out for stop-and-search, though police are less likely to detect evidence of crime than with white suspects. In spite of this, recent analysis shows a quarter of stabbing victims is black, the highest proportion on record.

These are systemic problems that must be solved if the UK’s knife crime crisis is to abate. Government, police and community groups must pool their resources and coordinate strategies in hope of a breakthrough. If not, they’ll be hundreds more Steve Narvaez Jaras – young, hopeful individuals reduced to a statistic at the end of a blade.

L'articolo Life at the Sharp End: Britain’s Knife Crime Crisis proviene da InsideOver.