The trouble is it's a survey and we don't know enough about the sample size, the areas covered or the types of people interviewed - however, according to the notes, we do know that it 'includes common assault, wounding, robbery and snatch theft. It does not include homicide (as the victims cannot be surveyed) and other types of violent crime, like firearms offences' - so the things that really matter like escalating gun and knife crime appear not to be included anyway. The quoted massive drop in crimes by 43% in the mid 90's is considered more to be as a result of a change in the type and way the data is collected rather than to a sudden massive improvement in policing. Also the graph raises the point that too many people are either afraid to report a violent crime for fear of repercussions (as was the case in the Damilola Taylor murder - the gang reaponsible threatened the local people such that they were afarid to come forward), or because they feel that the police don't take enough interest or are effective when they do.

A story
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A year or so back, while I was away on business, my wife was awoken by a noise outside around 1.00 am. She assumed it was our older son who has a habit of coming around at all hours to do something to his car (we have a handy motion detector floodlight on our drive - useful illumination to work by). She went outside and called:'Andrew is that you?' The talking she had heard stopped for a moment and then she noticed that the car the other side of the hedge wasn't our son's, so she promptly went back inside and locked the door. The car stayed put and she saw people (men - as they were men's voices she had heard) moving about still outside. She was quite frightened - we are in an isolated location - so she called the police and explained her concern (also that our son's TVR was parked at our place - a likely target). Police reaction: there are no patrols in the area, but call again if they attempt to enter the property. Nice. Luckily they moved off of their own volition about ten minutes later (god knows how she would have been able to defend herself if they had tried to enter). No violence, but it demonstrates the knub of the problem.

The same thing has happened a couple more times when I have been around. The last one involved a man literally walking around our property talking on his phone at 2.30 am. Even when we got up and put lights on he still stayed in our drive. That time the police did come - three cars (it must have been a quiet night!), arriving about ten seconds after he had sped away from our house in his car. They'd actually passed him, as they were coming in the opposite direction, but they didn't manage to relate a lone motorist driving fast from the direction of our property with possibly being linked to our intruder, so he was never apprehended.

I have a solution that my Dad taught me for taking care of obnoxious camp neighbors. It involves an old-school hockey/goalie mask and a chain-saw; let your imagination fill in the blanks.

Good lord.

Girls chant ‘kill him’ as gang chases schoolboy then stabs him to death

Cf, over here, "firearms offences" are not crimes committed with a firearm but crimes resulting in having or carrying a firearm. I'm wondering if it means the same thing there.

If that's the case, it could explain why the BCS is going down while the police, since handguns are pretty much outlawed, could be arresting more people for possession thus showing a sharp increase in total crimes? :confused:

Eddie Polec. This is not a new story, unfortunately. Out of control mobs, large and small, pitchforks and torches, ropes and hoods, sticks and stones, go back as far as recorded history.:(