Knife vs. firearm homicide in UK & US

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Amnesty program takes aim at UK's ‘knife culture'

Rash of fatal stabbings prompts crackdown, calls for tougher laws

By César G. Soriano

USA TODAY

 

LONDON — Hundreds of teens in black-and-blue uniforms poured out of the doors of the London Academy last week at the end of another school day.

 

They rushed past the three security guards in bright yellow jackets and the balloons, flags, banners and soccer memorabilia propped at the front gate in a memorial to the high school's star athlete, Kiyan Prince.

 

Kiyan, 15, was stabbed May 18, just yards from the front gate of the affluent north London school. The teen's death and the stabbing murder of a young policewoman earlier this month have compelled authorities to get tough on what Prime Minister Tony Blair last week called Britain's “knife culture.”

 

In its latest and broadest attempt to get knives off the streets and especially out of the hands of young people, the government Thursday announced a nationwide knife amnesty program. Police hope to collect 30,000 knives that will be turned in at police stations, churches, supermarkets and schools around the country. Home Secretary Charles Clark told the BBC a coinciding public-awareness campaign's message “is simple: Carrying knives on the streets will not be tolerated.”

 

Stabbings are the most common form of murder in Britain, where firearms — except certain shotguns and sporting rifles — are outlawed. Most police officers in Britain do not carry firearms.

 

Of the 839 homicides in England and Wales in the 12 months ending Nov. 28 — the most recent period for which Home Office figures are available — 29% involved sharp instruments including knives, blades and swords. Firearms account for just 9% of murders in Britain. The murder rate in Britain is 15 per million people.

 

The U.S. murder rate is 55 per million, according to the FBI. Of those, 70% of murders were committed with firearms; just 14% involved knives or cutting instruments.

 

In London alone, there were 12,589 knife-related crimes last year. Police say the people most likely to carry knives are males ages 15 to 18.

 

A poll released this month by the Police Federation found that 30% of officers had been threatened by a knife-wielding suspect while on duty.

 

It is illegal for anyone under 16 to buy a knife, a fact that is posted anywhere knives are sold — from independent cutlery shops to department store housewares departments. The Home Office defines a knife as any article with a blade or a point. Folding pocket knives with blades less than 3 inches long are exempt from the May 24-June 30 amnesty and crackdown.

 

Carrying a blade in school is punishable by up to four years imprisonment, but that penalty is rarely handed out. Instead, most first-time offenders are expelled or receive other punishments that don't involve prison time, says the Victims Of Crime Trust, a support group for people whose family or friends have been murdered.

 

A 16-year-old boy has been charged in the death of Kiyan.

 

London Academy Principal Phil Hearne said in a Press Association interview that there is a “real issue” of knives in the community. But he noted, “It's our first encounter with knives as a school community.”

 

Kiyan's murder was the latest — but not the last — of several recent fatal stabbing attacks: Police constable Nisha Patel-Nasri, 29, was stabbed and killed earlier this month while investigating a suspicious noise outside her London home. Mental health worker Ashleigh Ewing, 22, was found stabbed to death May 19 at the home of one of her patients.

 

On Saturday, Thomas Grant, 19, a St. Andrews University student, was stabbed to death on a train. The attack came despite the launch last month by British Transport Police of a program that uses metal detectors to identify and arrest passengers carrying knives or other weapons on trains.

 

The House of Lords is considering a crime-reduction bill that would raise the minimum age to buy a knife from 16 to 18, give teachers the power to physically search students and mandate jail time for possessing a knife without cause.

 

In the meantime, officials hope setting up collection bins across the country during the amnesty will raise awareness and help reduce knife attacks.

 

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, calls the amnesty program, “no more than a public relations exercise.” The victims' rights advocacy group proposes tougher penalties, including a mandatory five-year prison sentence for anyone possessing a knife.

 

“It's difficult to discuss the issue of knife crime without discussing the bigger picture of finding solutions to deal with the knife-carrying culture,” says Frances Lawrence, an anti-knife activist. Her husband, Philip, a high school principal, was stabbed to death in 1995 while trying to protect a pupil outside his London school.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060531/a_ukknives31.art.htm

 

 

 

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