Your safety depends upon your ability to acutely assess situations and people, writes weapons awareness trainer Steve Collins of PS5.
Sarah Jones, the Labour MP and founder and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, said: “It’s official, knife crime is at the highest level on record. The proportion of murders involving a knife has jumped from 30 to 40 per cent, and across the country young people are living with fear and trauma. Today’s figures confirm that this is a public health emergency.” Shock horror! … But just a moment, they make it sound as if this is something new. Whereas, of course, anyone who knows anything about knife crime knows that it is anything but new. So please tell us something we don’t know! Have you ever wanted to scream ‘I told you so!?’
Not worked
That’s how I feel about knife crime. The millions of tax payers’ cash that has been poured into fighting knife crime has been an utter waste. It just hasn’t worked, and those that know me will verify that I have been very vocal about so-called ‘Government strategies’ being a complete waste of time and public money. In one of her last actions as Home Secretary Amber Rudd launched a ‘serious violence strategy’ to clamp down on violent crime, which has been rising steadily for five years. The strategy is to be backed by £40m of Home Office funding and an Offensive Weapons Bill to ban the sale of corrosive liquids to under-18s and introduce tougher restrictions on buying knives online. The strategy will focus on the links between drug trade, particularly for crack cocaine, and violent crime, and has anything changed or improved? No! And why? Because most of the people involved in these initiatives have no understanding of the problem beyond accepting that there is one.
Soaring
When are the people that decide on these policies going to recognise that the only ones who really understand knife crime on the streets of Britain are the people that commit it? These people have no interest in what the law says about knives, and even less regarding what spews out of 10 Downing Street. Violent crime has been allowed to soar. 1,296 this year alone. And that’s just London, what about Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, etc. It’s a disgrace. The public’s perception is that such crime is out of control and nor the government or police are doing anything to help or project them. Remember ‘Catch it, kill it, bin it’? Just a few years ago, at a cost of millions, every household in the UK was sent a 12-page leaflet on how to protect yourself and your loved ones against swine flu. You could obtain this information in about 15 languages, on audio tape, in extra large print and even in Braille.
Please let me pose a very simple question … where is the 12-page Government leaflet that tells us how to protect ourselves and our loved ones against an epidemic of weapons-related street crime that has been allowed to grow into a colossal, malignant cancer already responsible for destroying thousands of lives? As a nation we should be mortally embarrassed that, in the 21st century, the British people have allowed the horrendous decline in values and discipline to ravage our streets and terrorise our citizens. I have made this statement in talks and lectures I have given all over the world. I will continue to say it over and over and over again, and I make no apologies for sounding like a broken record. It’s a no-brainer … if you want to cut knife crime then … ‘educate the victims’ and that means everybody.
The victims
It’s the victims who pick up the tab for the Government getting it wrong. It’s the victims that suffer in silence while huge amounts of Government resources are being poured into futile initiatives that just don’t work. We are all victims of violent crime even if you have never been attacked and, as such, every citizen should have access to information that helps them to understand the threat and gives them options on what they can do to avoid and survive it. ‘Accept it, avoid it, survive it’:
– Complacency will steal your life: accept the fact that weapons-related street crime is now part of your life and will never go away;
– Do everything in your power to stay away from the people and avoid the places that might endanger you;
– Learn how to recognise the danger signs that always precede an attack: this will help you to survive, and survival is all you can ever hope for. And remember no matter how many more armed Police they put on the streets, it’s pretty well guaranteed not one of them will be there if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of a knife attack.
Stop talking and do something!
I have been banging on about the dangers of ever increasing weapons related crime for over two decades. In 1999, two years before 9-11, I wrote the ‘Manual of Prohibited and Concealable Weapons’ This publication sits at the very core of all weapons awareness and recognition training. I have written the book ‘Avoiding and Surviving a Knife Attack’, copious editorials features, delivered training and lectures to law enforcement agencies, security professionals and the private sector all over the word. Ten years ago in my weapons awareness training I warned of ‘Vitriolage’ (acid attacks) and was told that we would never see acid attacks on the streets in the UK. Vitriolage is now another massive problem, just something else they got wrong. Sadly governments never speak to the likes of me or to anybody else for that matter. They keep it all in house because their ignorance and arrogance leads them to believe that they are the experts and therefore they know best. ‘Educate the Victims’ … that’s you and me.
