Stabbing's In South East London

While I agree that knife crime gets reported more and more these days, I have to agree with the metropolitan police when they say knife crime is down. Back in 1999 I was travelling on the 202 bus heading to Crystal Palace when I was viciously attacked and knifed in the arm in broad daylight. I tried fighting of my attackers but there was 6 of them and it was a pure unprovoked racial attack on myself for simply sitting on the back seat of the bus. I never reported this crime to the police, I simply went home and bandaged up my arm and knew in future that sitting on the back seat of a bus when 6 juveniles got on was going to cause an argument and maybe an attack, simply because they wanted to sit together and one of them didn't want to sit on their own was enough for them to attack me and stab me. I have been attacked on many occasions living in London.

I was attacked in Norwood when I was 13 years old by a gang who punched and kicked me to the ground and carried on kicking me so hard on the ground that I wet myself. This was in broad daylight as well, there were around 50 witnesses on Beulah Hill that day and no one intervened. I didn't call the police or report it to anyone, I picked myself up and got on the bus and went home. I have been mugged by a gang at Sydenham train station, and could tell you of hundreds of other stories of friends of mine during the 80's and 90's who were attacked, stabbed and mugged in South East London which they never reported to the police.

Times have now changed, the metropolitan police are doing such a great job to tackle crime in London and they have made knife crime so aware to people that it only makes sense that more people are coming forward to report it. This however looks to the average Joe Bloggs on the street that knife crime has gone up when in fact it has only been reported more due to the police awareness on the subject and has actually not gone up at all. Many people in the 80's and 90's like myself didn't report attacks for the simply reason we didn't think that the police would take it seriously and maybe judge us in some way for fighting. The police are not unapproachable anymore, they have completely changed their image and I believe this is down partially to working side by side with the community police officers and special constables.

Knife crime has gone down in South East London and when there is an attack nowadays, it gets reported to the police and arrests are made. I think that South East London has become a much safer place to live and walk the streets thanks to the police force that we have. When someone does get stabbed now, it is in the papers and everybody will read about it making it even more aware and this is thanks to the news press that we have. I remember the old days and just because things were not reported did not mean they didn't exist.