FWIW we're all in a bit of a 'moral panic' over knife crime which is selling loads of newspapers.
I've been watching this for years and getting a load of flack in this forum, on social media and even in the sodding Guardian for pointing out for example that in London it is disproportionately black kids stabbing each other.
'What's it got to do with a Dover Councillor?' indeed.
Fortunately, over the past year or so, even Trevor Phillips and other people from the 'community'(sic) including many parents of the slaughtered kids themselves have been calling out for something to be done.
The press is all over it this weekend as two of the kids killed seem a bit like our own kids - they weren't on a stolen scooter, hadn't been excluded from school and had no sign of being 'promising footballers' or 'aspiring rappers'.
Looking at knife fatalities countrywide, in Jan/Feb this year there were 45 fatal stabbings.
Last year in the same period THERE WERE 61.
Bloody brilliant, we all get excited just when the figures are coming down!
Here's a presentation Cressida Dick used:-
https://www.governmentevents.co.uk/combating-gangs-violence-weapon-crime-speaker-presentations-4th-dec-2018/
The Met HAS been prioritising this without making a song and dance about it and without a sodding Knife Tsar which is why Feb - Dec 18 Homicide trend is DOWN (slide 2) , Under 25 knife victims are DOWN (slide 10).
Other slides show victims 53% BAME and offenders 73% BAME.
Yes, it is mostly black kids stabbing each other.
The Met getting on top of things. It's what they do. In spite of the lack of support from those they are trying to protect.
The problem is 'rural' forces who have no idea what is happening or how to deal with it and local councillors and others who have no analytical understanding of the sociological forces underpinning the 'problem' and come out with crap and crass statements like 'fortunately there is no knife problem in Dover'.
When (not if) the problem moves down here there's going to be a lot of catch-up being played.
Nothing is new under the sun. There are plenty of ethnographic studies of gang culture and drug dealing, admittedly mostly from America, which show exactly what is going on.
As ever, there are those who realise how little they know trying to find out what is actually going on and how to deal with it, and those who are totally ignorant of what is going on other than what they have gleaned from tomorrows chip-papers who apparently know everything and what the solutions are.
Twas ever thus.
Personally I blame it all on the lack of Youth Clubs + 'drill' music.....................