Page 8 - ARUBA TODAY

A8 WORLD NEWS
Friday 6 april 2018
London struggles to fight crime spike, murders soar in 2018

By JILL LAWLESS ing the turf war and it's driv-
LONDON (AP) — Friends ing the culture of violence."
say Israel Ogunsola was a Former police officer John
bubbly young man with a Carnochan has seen a city
knack for making people in the grip of violence, and
laugh. thinks he knows how it can
This week the 18-year-old be turned around.
was stabbed to death, be- In the early 2000s, the Scot-
coming London's 53rd mur- tish city of Glasgow was
der victim of 2018. The Brit- known as the murder capi-
ish capital is being shaken tal of Britain. In 2005, Car-
by a spike in deadly vio- nochan co-founded the
lence, much of it involving Violence Reduction Unit,
young people with knives which decided to treat vio-
caught up in gang feuds. lence as a public health is-
The causes are disputed sue, rather than simply as a
and so are the solutions. But law-and-order problem.
the pain is raw. "It gave us a new lan-
"I'm still in disbelief, because guage. We could start to
I don't understand why," speak about prevention,"
said 19-year-old Nella Pan- said Carnochan. "Because
da, standing beside a po- law and order, criminal jus-
lice cordon in the east Lon- A woman carries a flower to a crime scene in Link Street, Hackney, east London, Thursday April tice, didn't think about pre-
don borough of Hackney, 5, 2018. vention. Our idea of pre-
yards (meters) from where Associated Press vention was an alarm, or
Ogunsola collapsed on bars on your windows."
Wednesday evening. Po- York. The cities are roughly don Mayor Sadiq Khan, hampered by curbs to po- In Glasgow, prevention
lice and an off-duty para- the same size, with more who oversees London's lice stop-and-search pow- meant police working
medic battled to save him, than 8 million people, and Metropolitan Police. But ers — a decision made by alongside teachers, so-
but he was pronounced have similar extremes of most of the police budget then-Home Secretary The- cial workers and others to
dead 25 minutes later. poverty and wealth, but comes from the British gov- resa May, who is now prime "share the problem out"
"He was just a nice bubbly London has never record- ernment, which has cut minister. and find solutions. It also
person," Panda said Thurs- ed more murders in a year funding to police forces by Metropolitan Police Chief meant going to the young
day. "He made friends with than the U.S. metropolis. more than 20 percent since Cressida Dick has blamed men involved in violence
everybody ... it was always New York had 290 homi- 2010. social media for allowing and offering alternatives —
a good time when you was cides in 2017, the lowest Khan said Thursday that disputes to escalate rap- something many eagerly
with him." number in decades. rising crime is a national idly, taking young people seized. "When you say it out
Ogunsola was the 12th Police and community problem and "I can't solve "from slightly angry with loud it seems so obvious,"
teenager to die violently workers say London's surge it by myself." each other to 'fight' very Carnochan said. "If you
in London since January. in violence is partly driven "Since I first became may- quickly." are a young man leaving
Many of those arrested for by battles over control of or, I have been saying to Labour Party lawmaker home every night and you
the killings are also in their the illegal drug trade and the government that it's David Lammy, whose Tot- feel you have to put a knife
teens and 20s. a "postcode war" between not sustainable to make tenham constituency in down the waistband of
Most of the city's murder street gangs. Some victims the level of cuts they have north London has seen four your trousers to go out, that
victims were stabbed to were targeted, while oth- been making to London," murders this year, blamed can't be a good thing."
death. Guns are tightly re- ers may have been in the he said. international gangs supply- Between 2005 and 2015,
stricted in Britain and shoot- wrong place at the wrong The deficit-cutting Conser- ing the multi-billion dollar the number of murders in
ings are relatively rare. time — such as 17-year-old vative government has also cocaine trade that he said Glasgow fell by half. Car-
If the bloody trend contin- Tanesha Melbourne, killed slashed funding to local made Britain "the drugs nochan thinks a similar ap-
ues, London will far surpass in a drive-by shooting on councils, which run many market of Europe." proach would work in Lon-
the 130 murders in 2017 Monday as she hung out social services, leading to "Drugs are prolific," Lammy don. "People are just angry
and reach a number not with friends. the closure of youth clubs, told the BBC. "It's like (food- with life, and with this it's
seen since the early 2000s. As well as multiple causes, libraries and programs for delivery service) Deliveroo. just going to make more
In February and March, there are multiple candi- young people. They're as prolific as order- people angry and it's just a
London hit the unwanted dates to blame for the city's Money is not the only con- ing a pizza. You can get continuous cycle of anger,"
milestone of recording rising homicide rate. cern. Some argue that them on Snapchat, What- said Panda, the victim's
more homicides than New Some have criticized Lon- crime-fighting has been sApp. That in the end is driv- friend.q

Spring forward: European grid fixes lag that slowed clocks

BERLIN (AP) — One excuse resulted in energy being di- alarms, oven clocks and day that its members add- time," said spokeswoman
fewer for being late: elec- verted from the local grid. devices used to program ed energy into the system Claire Camus. The industry
tricity grid operators in Eu- That triggered a domino heating systems keep time over the course of March group said it would con-
rope have fixed a glitch effect , reducing the elec- with the help of the grid fre- to bring the frequency tinue to support Serbia and
that had slowed down tric frequency across the quency, they were slowed back to its target average Kosovo in finding a solu-
countless clocks across the 25-country network that down by several minutes of 50 Hertz. tion to their energy dispute,
continent for months. stretches from Portugal to since January. "One of the effects is nota- which is part of a wider dis-
The problem started earlier Poland, and Greece to The European Network of bly that the digital clocks agreement between the
this year after a dispute be- Germany. Transmission System Opera- geared by electric fre- two neighbors that goes
tween Serbia and Kosovo Because many radio tors for Electricity said Tues- quency are now back on back almost 20 years.q