Violence on the District

To 'wear 2 hats':

The number of incidents should be read with the context of the millions of journeys made. The tube is safer than walking down many streets in the areas they serve, but unlike a retail outlet, the tube is an open system and anyone with a ticket - bar a few exceptions - can travel.

However, almost to contradict myself, the number of actual incidents are much higher than the crime figures. As any member of staff will tell you, actually getting hold of the BTP by phone is a major achievement in itself.

Staff assaults are an interesting topic and one obviously close to my heart. There are 3 major contributors to staff assaults:

1) The stressed commuter.
2) The drunk or mentally unaware.
3) The ticket less traveler.

I totally disagree that staff should be given self defence lessons as staff shouldn't be put into the situation in the first place. Sadly too many staff will get themselves assaulted for the matter of a few pounds.

The stressed commuter, while fairly aggressive, normally only reacts because of a trigger and you then end up as the guy in the uniform. Most of the super-stressed are probably at risk of losing a job due to lateness. I would personally get every member of LU staff to spend a couple of days commuting. Some LU staff fail to understand what customers go through during a short delay. A 2/3 min delay can mean a missed connection......


Violent crime is in the entire community and as such must be dealt with by legislation and by our elected politicans.

Why not?

Legislation could remove drug dealers and hence remove drug abuse, alot of mental illness and alot of crime.

Simple answer : Hang all convicted drug dealers. SIMPLE

Newspapers only look for the sensational items to highlight and are not interested in breaking down the statistics ie - Number of Assaults per Station on Line, etc. A Poll of readers looks good as well- "Do you think travel by train has become more dangerous ? " Obviously some areas are more at risk of assaults and vandalism than others.
In a day or two it will be "Are today's Bus Drivers less caring about the safety of their passengers than previously ? "

Even seemingly watertight convictions can sometimes be wrong.
For an interesting angle on this, read the 1907 novel The Red Thumb Mark by R Austin Freeman - if you can get hold of a copy*.
It was written at a time when the courts were becoming as reliant on fingerprinting as we now are on DNA. The story tells of a safe that is robbed by a thief who apparently scratches or cuts himself in the process and leaves a fingerprint in the blood inside the relocked safe.
The indisputable scientific evidence that overturned the case makes one wonder why fingerprint evidence has not been regularly challenged in court in the past 100 years since this book was written.

* This is one of the novels of R Austin Freeman which featured Dr Thorndyke who was a latter day contemporary of Sherlock Holmes.

The only way anything will ever get done any more, is by action! If they close the line between Barking & Upminster for a while, at first LU will get all the blame, but if they tell them who the real cause of closure is, e.g. the people firing air guns at the drivers, then maybe, people will start to complain to the council and the police, who should be dealing with this anyway!

No-one should fear walking down the street, let alone going to work! If the drivers decided to strike, then I'd support them!

As for "reducing violent attacks on staff and customers", the only real way this will happen, is by putting a police officer at every station, on every train, every day! CCTV doesn't prevent crime anymore. It doesn't even solve crimes (and if you call community service a decent punishment for stabbing someone, then you must have a screw loose!).

Something else that doesn't really help is selective hiring. The Met and LU are so caught up in all this equality in the work place rubbish, that the numbers are not enough. If they got rid of all this and just hired the people who could do the job, (regardless of sex, colour, background etc), then you would have more staff at stations, and more police to help!

But it is sadly another problem that wont be solved overnight!

2. Have-a-go heroes generally tend to get arrested (in my view, the law appears to favour the criminal), injured, or even killed. Why bother, be it on or outside the tube?

Yes to injured and killed, absolutely no to arrested. There has never been a case of a "have a go hero" being convicted/jailed for their actions - the closest is Tony Martin, but since he blasted a child in the back with an illegal shotgun, this isn't representative of your average stepping-in-to-protect-someone case.

Simple answer : Hang all convicted drug dealers. SIMPLE

Hanging drug dealers is perhaps the worst idea I've heard advocated by anyone, ever. For a start, the term 'drug' is meaningless (do you include people who sell cannabis and ecstacy? If so, what about people who sell the more harmful drugs of alcohol and tobacco?).

Even if you're referring to highly addictive, currently-illegal drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin, the net effect would be entirely negative. Suddenly, among people who sell these drugs (and they would continue to sell them - they do so out of desperation and don't have any other avenues for making that level of money), there would be no incentive to moderate their behaviour. The murder rate would rocket, particularly among policemen and bystanders (whereas under current policies, the murder rate has been pretty much flat for 10 years - and declining if you discount gang-on-gang violence).

This is even aside from the moral issue (is it really a uniquely evil thing worthy of hanging for me to sell a willing punter something that will provide them with a few hours of fun?)

Now, legalising drugs and prescribing them to addicts would have a far greater crime-cutting effect, and would remove the point of being a dealer in the first place. And (going back on topic) tighter controls on alcohol would be by far the best way of cutting antisocial behaviour and assaults on LUL - illegal drug use accounts for a tiny proportion of the latter two.

John B