Three people, including a 17-year-old, were violently stabbed over a two-hour period on Sunday in another day of violence for the British capital under Mayor Sadiq Khan.
The first victim, believed to be in his twenties, was found with serious wounds in Lambeth, South London, shortly after 6 p.m, The Sun reports.
As police officers were rushing to attend the scene, another man, said to be aged 20, was stabbed just an hour later three miles away in Northolt, West London. The West has experienced fewer deliberate killings than the North, South, and East of the capital, experiencing nine killings in 2018 so far, compared to 17, 18, and 20, respectively.
Finally, a 17-year-old was stabbed shortly after 8 p.m. in the wealthy borough of Harrow, also in the West of the city. Reports suggest he is in hospital in critical condition.
The violent crime surge follows Prime Minister Theresa May pressuring police to reduce their use of stop-and-search against ethnic minorities during her tenure as Home Secretary, and Sadiq Khan vowing he would do “everything in my power” to cut back its use during his run for Mayor of London.
Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick has tried to suggest the situation is not as bad as it appears, citing figures showing homicide is down overall since 2005.
However, these statistics included 52 victims of radical Islamic terrorism during the 7/7 attacks. The figures also fail to take into account a huge increase in survival rates for potentially deadly injuries following the establishment of Major Trauma Networks and the adoption of medical techniques developed on the battlefield by paramedics and surgeons.
It also ignores a massive and indisputable rise in youth homicide, in particular — reported as being up by an astonishing 84 per cent on the previous year in October 2017.
Certain categories of crime which were previously unknown or incredibly rare stand out as areas of particular concern.
Acid attacks were the first to cause real public alarm, having become popular among street gang members and robbers due to the weak or non-existent custodial terms handed down for possession of corrosive substances. But this has been partly superseded by an even faster increase in so-called moped crime.
The latest official figures show an incredible 19,385 moped crimes were carried out over a period of nine months — a rate of around 60 a day, and equivalent to a 1,000 per cent over the last three years.
Recent high profile moped crimes include an attack on comedian Michael McIntyre, who was relieved of an expensive Rolex watch while sitting in his car outside a school by criminals who smashed through his window with a hammer.
Danny Pearce, 31, was even less fortunate, being shot and stabbed to death with a hunting knife after attempting to flee from two moped robbers who demanded his Rolex, in an attack which featured a level of violence police described as “truly horrendous”.
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