How to cut crime in London
| Eleven of our young people have been murdered on London’s streets this year alone. Twenty-seven were murdered last year.There are many things that the Mayor of London can get themselves involved in but this awful collection of human tragedies demonstrates why cutting crime is right at the centre of my priorities. This is what being Mayor of London should be about: not the showbiz trappings or the ‘London embassies’ around the world.I know from my thirty years of policing the streets of London and listening to local communities that simply talking tough isn’t enough. You have to deliver results.
Instead we have Ken Livingstone criticising the media for reporting these appalling tragedies and claiming that there is nothing he can do about it - and Boris Johnson thinking that taking away a free bus pass will solve the problem. This simply is not good enough. That’s why I’ve promised to cut crime by 5% each year in my first term - or I’ll quit. So one action I will take is to get knives and guns off our streets. There are evil criminals who fully deserve our moral condemnation and firm punishment, but that’s not the full story. We all (at least nearly all of us!) have done things we shouldn’t have from time to time when we were young. Some are trivial, some are far worse. But if you have a gun or knife in your hand the consequences of even a brief mistake can be awful. Condemning the person, their family, or society isn’t enough - we need to get the guns and knives out of people’s hands. We should use intelligence led stop and search. At the moment, less than one in five stop and searches is looking for weapons. That’s because the police are trying to hit perverse targets rather than being able to concentrate on what really matters. I want to see more officers patrolling the transport network and I want to work with local communities to help tackle crime in their areas with their solutions. We need to make it easier for people to contact their local police team so I am committed to stopping police station closures, and making sure that it’s fully trained police officers we put out on the streets of London. Cutting crime will require all of us - police, residents and those you choose to elect - to work together. With your support on May 1st we can get down to work straight away. You can help bring that about by forwarding this email to your friends and by encouraging them to sign up at www.brianpaddick.org. Kind regards, Brian Paddick P.S. Encouraging your friends to sign up at www.brianpaddick.org takes only a moment, but is a really effective way of helping my campaign. Thank you. |
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Published and promoted by and on behalf of Liberal Democrats, 4 Cowley Street, London, SW1P 3NB, (020) 7222 7999. Dispatched (printed) by Connectpoint Direct, 19B Quay Street, Manchester M3 3HN. |
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