|
|
 |
| |
Chief Supt Bob Carr |
Crime drops, but police boss warns: offenders are younger
Borough Commander greets plans to upgrade skunk, ‘a psychotic drug’
BOROUGH Commander Bob Carr has welcomed plans to reverse the downgrading of cannabis as he celebrates a “spectacular” fall in crime in Islington.
He has also said that offenders are getting younger, adding: “It still remains that a lot of crime is committed by young people on young people. If anything, the age group’s getting younger.”
While Chief Supt Carr is celebrating the borough’s record of having the biggest reduction in key offences – including burglaries and violent crime – in London over five years, he has backed Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plans to upgrade cannabis to a Class B drug.
He said: “It should never have been taken down to Class C in the first place. It was very confusing. The moment it was set in Class C people began to think it was an innocuous drug, it doesn’t hurt.
“Skunk is very damaging. While it doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate violence on the streets it does affect people in the way they think and operate. We’ve made a lot more arrests for cannabis, particularly skunk, and make no apologies for arresting people for skunk, it’s a psychotic drug.”
Over the past five years “key crimes” in Islington – burglaries, murder, violence, robberies and gun crime – have dropped by a third, and by 18 per cent in the last year.
Chief Supt Carr said the fall was “exceptionally good news” but that there was still more work to be done.
He added: “I need people to start believing they are less likely to be a victim of crime because we seem to see an increase in people feeling more threatened, more likely to be a victim of crime, where it’s not borne out by the figures.”
He is now faced with Met Police targets to reduce youth and knife crime, particularly significant in Islington, where teenagers Martin Dinnegan and Nassirudeen Osawe were stabbed to death last year.
He said: “We’ve seen too much of it. Even though we saw quite a substantial reduction in that crime last year, two kids killed is two too many.”
But he said he will not impose knife arches – used to detect weapons – on schools unless every headteacher makes a unanimous decision to install them.
He said: “The only way we’d ever get knife arches into schools is if all the schools in the borough decided to use them at the same time and take a single stance against it.
“We have cops outside schools to ensure kids are protected at crucial times of the day, at kicking-out times.
“We’re trying to tackle criminals before they become criminals. We know the signs but we have to make the investments to make sure they don’t become criminals and people we have to deal with in 10 years’ time.” |
 |
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
