Are members of the public so fed up with knife crime that they are prepared to stop it themselves?

Three people were stabbed following a shocking incident in Bishopsgate yesterday, Thursday 6 October. As commuters made their way to work just before 10 am what appears to be a gang of thieves on electric motorbikes, attempted a phone theft.

Members of the public intervened to stop the brazen attack taking place in broad daylight and were subsequently stabbed themselves. Fortunately none of the three victims have sustained life threatening injuries and two suspects are being sought by City of London Police.

Two factors are worth looking at here-firstly, gangs of thieves are operating so brazenly on our streets armed with large knives. Secondly, members of the public are so sick and tired of thieves brandishing knives in their faces that they are now prepared to intervene and stop these thieves themselves.

Sadly, due to the decade of cuts to our policing, police officers are not as visible on our streets as we would like them to be. No fault of theirs, I’m sure they would like to be actively patrolling our streets but years and years of brutal cuts have meant policing has become reactive rather than pro active.

The public are fully aware of this and despite the very small minority calling for the defunding of the police, the majority of London’s inhabitants actually support our police and do want to see them out and about as they once were.

Yesterday’s shocking incident being shown on social media highlights just how shameless these thieves are. In a busy area of the city, they chose to attempt a phone robbery armed with knives. They are brazen faced, and completely unashamed of attacking innocent commuters on their way to work. The bottom line is- they just don’t care and are prepared to go out armed with knives.

But, now we are witnessing the start of members of the public making a stand against the violence taking place on our streets. People are sick and tired of knife crime, they are fed up of seeing youths in particular armed with large knives waving them about in broad daylight. They can see that despite our police doing everything they can to tackle violence, they are not supported as they should be by those in positions of authority.

People struggle to make a living and work hard to buy themselves new phones and are now not prepared to have them snatched from them by gangs of thieves. They are also aware that if they are robbed, the chances are they will never see their phone again and that if the suspects are caught, the sentences they get are completely insignificant. Hence why they are now making a stand against these thieves working our streets.

In Havering we have seen a group of local residents make a stand against car theft and walking the streets at night to keep a watch over their vehicles as they are just as fed up of having their cars stolen during the early hours of the morning.

Havering Joint Task Force has achieved fantastic results in stopping car thefts across the borough and recovering stolen vehicles, but sadly thieves are still operating the area and residents now want to actively patrol their streets to keep their vehicles safe.

Is the tide now turning on knife crime? Are people so fed up of the authorities failure to tackle knife crime that they are prepared to jump in and do it themselves? Yesterday, members of the public clearly showed that they were not prepared to stand by and watch another armed robbery take place.

For many years now, the public have been shouting that they want more police on our streets, police officers themselves have warned us that all these cuts would have had huge consequences and they were right of course.

Now, we have had three members of the public stabbed as they bravely intervened to stop a phone theft, something I’m sure not one of them would have imagined themselves doing as they dressed for work yesterday morning.

We have reached the point were the public is well and truly fed up with knife crime and equally fed up with those in authority argue with each other over what should be done and still doing very little about it but regularly put the blame on our over stretched, over worked and unpaid police officers.