Blacks blamed for half London street crime

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 6

Blacks blamed for half London street crime

NZPA-Reuter London London’s police, breaking silence on a sensitive racial topic, said yesterday that more than half the muggings in the capital last year were committed by blacks.

It was. the first time that Scotland Yard has given such figures, based on descriptions supplied by victims. The topic is a touchy one. When riots swept a south London district last year, critics accused the police of provoking the trouble by harassing young blacks.

The rules under which the police can stop and question suspects have since been tightened up. The head of the policemen’s union, Jim Jardine, told reporters yesterday that a sharp rise in street crime last year resulted from the new constraints imposed on the police.

According to the police figures, robbery and other violent thefts in London rose by 34 per cent last year to a total of 18,763 cases.

In 10,399 cases the assailants were described as coloured. In the London context, coloured could refer to blacks of West Indian origin, Indians, Pakistanis, and other smaller ethnic groups. But evidence of individual cases indicates that the vast majority of the coloured muggers were young blacks either from the West Indies or born in Britain of West Indian parents. According to police figures, victims in 4967 cases described their attackers as white and 704 robberies were blamed on racially mixed gangs. In 2693 cases no description was available. Gilbert Kelland, Metropolitan assistant commissioner for crime, said yesterday that the race data on muggings was given because of a demand for the information from the public and the media. “It was considered it was important, if the position is to be understood and to

prevent gossip and rumour and miscalculations, to publish them,” he told a press conference.

In Brixton, the scene of last year’s riot, a spokesman for a local community association criticised the decision to publish the figures. “It is irresponsible and tantamount to racial hatred to give the impression that only one section of the community, that is the blacks, are the biggest culprits. “No-one will deny that blacks, like whites, are involved in crime” said Courtenay Laws of the Brixton Neighbourhood Community Association.

“But in the absence of figures for convictions, as opposed to complaints by members of the public many of whom can exploit racial resentments to lay the blame at the door of blacks, one should not get hysterical or make statements that unjustly brand an entire community,” he said.