credit: rambo.fandom.com/wiki /  “Rambo’s” First Blood Survival knife is a favorite murder weapon of gangs in the United Kingdom. 

By Gary Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

The Rambo First Blood knife is the flavor that many gang bangers in London savor.  London, and many parts of the United Kingdom, is caught in the grip of  a knife-crime epidemic at the moment. Many gang bangers don’t leave home without a knife for fear they become the latest stabbing victim on the streets of England. Fatal stabbings in Great Britain have skyrocketed to the highest level since the Second World War.  NHS hospitals treated more than 1,000 stabbings, glassings and other blade attacks on teenagers last year – a rise of more than 50 per cent per cent since 2013, the health service has revealed. And it is not just Afro-Caribbean folk being  knifed to death in the UK. Victims and murderers include whites, Pakistanis, South Asian Indians, and others. It is a very sad situation as many of the victims and murderers are just “babies”  being just 15, 16,  17-years-old.  Britain’s Office for National Statistics recent crime report in April reported that  police in England and Wales recorded nearly 41,000 crimes involving knives or “sharp instruments” in 2018. The number of 2018 knife crimes in England and Wales was almost 45,000.  Prime Minister Theresa May referred to the  knife epidemic as a “cancer of British society. Prince Charles referred to knife crime as a “pervasive horror.”  Some 100 people have fatally stabbed this year alone.  In one heart-wrenching fatal incident, the mother of the victim recounted on television news how her teenage son was stabbed to death, knifed to the  heart. The stabbing have occurred mostly as a result of  rivalries between youth gangs. However, many innocent bystanders are among victims.   In the UK criminal underworld, knifing someone to death is a badg e of honor, where one can prove his worth in his gang by taking the life of another.  Something we have seen over here in the  United States for decades.

UK Police Utilize Controversial “Stop And Frisk” Tactics  For Taking Dangerous weapons off Street 

credit: theworldnews.net /   London murder epidemic sparks soul searching in the UK to find a solution to stop the crime wave. 

So-called Stop-and-Frisk police tactics are being put into place in the United Kingdom as one solution to remove illegal knifes from the streets and prevent crime. However, as experienced in the  United States, Stop-and-Frisk is an extremely controversial police tactic, as such operations disproportionately target black and minority ethnic communities.  Other solutions include installing metal detectors in schools. 

“There has been a torrent of media coverage about violent crime among children and young people in the UK. But it seems to offer little consensus on what’s causing this crisis, what the impact of measures taken by government and police are and what should be done to curb the violence,”    theconversation.com.

credit: theconversation.com / Mourning young lives. / Isabel Infantes/PA Wire

“Carrying a knife often started as a way to avoid becoming a victim … Most of the people I spoke to who had carried a knife had been threatened, some on multiple occasions. Some had been attacked and a few had been severely injured”,  Peter Traynor, senior research assistant, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Just Giving Police More Power is Not the Solution – academic consensus

“So far, government plans to tackle the issue have focused on granting police greater powers to surveil, stop and search, and punish “suspicious” young people,  writes theconversation.com. 

credit: theconversation,com /  PA Dominic Lipinski /  U.K. Home Secretary Sajid Javid

As part of the UK government’s decision to enhance police powers, Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, will seek to introduce Knife Crime Prevention Orders which:  Can apply to any person aged 12 or over who carries a knife, has been convicted of a knife-related offence, or is suspected by police of carrying one; impose curfews, geographical boundaries or social media restrictions; Result in conviction and a prison sentence of up to two years if the order is breached.

“Javid’s proposals are flawed, because they are based on the fundamental misunderstanding that you can prevent violence by identifying and punishing those identified as ‘at risk’ of offending. But stigmatising young people as ‘risky’ draws them into conflict with the authorities, as young people become over-policed and over-surveilled.”

Jo Deakin, criminologist, and Laura Bui, criminologist, both at University of Manchester. – theconversation.com. 

U.K. Home Secretary Javid was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, one of five sons of Pakistani Muslim immigrant parents. His father worked as a bus driver.  Javid’s is a great story, and testimony  of a Pakistani-UK citizen working hard  and overcoming great adversity in the well-known racist British society to go on to work a managing director for Deutsche Bank, culminating in becoming Home Secretary. However, Javid must be careful to not allow those with hidden agenda’s in the political / police establishment to use him by putting a minority, person of colour, as the face of its draconian anti-crime operations, that will result in heavy-handed policing of Black and Minority UK citizens.